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 Gordon Freedman was the fourth medical practitioner to face trial on
charges stemming from what prosecutors say was a wide-ranging
bribery scheme orchestrated by the now-bankrupt drugmaker that
helped fuel the U.S. opioid epidemic.
A federal jury in Manhattan found Freedman guilty of conspiring to
violate the Anti-Kickback Statute and conspiring to commit honest
services wire fraud, prosecutors said.
"This is a very sad day for a doctor who spent his entire career
caring for people suffering with terrible and debilitating pain,"
said Samuel Braverman, a lawyer for Freedman.
Prosecutors allege that Chandler, Arizona-based Insys bribed doctors
by retaining them to act as speakers at sham events ostensibly meant
to educate clinicians about its fentanyl spray, Subsys.
Fentanyl is up to 100 times stronger than morphine. While the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration has approved Subsys for use in treating
cancer pain, doctors who took bribes often prescribed it to
non-cancer patients, prosecutors said.
Freedman was one of Insys' paid speakers, earning $308,600 from 2012
to 2015, money he received in exchange for writing Subsys
prescriptions, prosecutors said.
Freedman denied wrongdoing. Braverman said during his opening
statement at trial that every prescription Freedman wrote was needed
by his patients.
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The doctor was among five in New York indicted in March 2018 on
charges that they accepted kickbacks from Insys. The other four have
pleaded guilty.
Insys filed for bankruptcy in June days after striking a $225
million settlement with the U.S. Justice Department in which a
subsidiary pleaded guilty to fraud.
Several former Insys executives and employees have also faced
charges, including John Kapoor, Insys's founder and onetime
chairman.
A federal jury in Boston in May found Kapoor and four other
ex-executives guilty of racketeering conspiracy. A federal judge
last month overturned part of that verdict though sustained the
remainder of the verdict and declined to grant them a new trial.
Freedman faces a separate indictment charging him with
over-prescribing opioids to a patient who died in 2017 of a fentanyl
overdose. He has pleaded not guilty.
(Reporting by Brendan Pierson in New York and Nate Raymond in
Boston; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Alistair Bell and Marguerita
Choy)
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