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America’s Lawyer Mike Papantonio talks about a former drug company CEO who was arrested on charges of bribery and fraud involved in the opioid epidemic.
Transcript:
And, finally tonight, some good news for victims of the deadly opioid epidemic. A former drug company CEO was arrested and taken in by federal officers on charges of bribery and fraud. John Kapoor was taken in by handcuffs after federal agents raided his home in Arizona. He was charged with bribing doctors in the form of kickbacks to write large amounts of prescriptions of the opioid pain killer, fentanyl, to people who didn’t need it. Prosecutors say Kapoor’s company, Insys, paid doctors hundreds of thousands of dollars and one report alleges those kickback bribes reached well over $2 million in 2016 alone. Fentanyl is known to be a very powerful and addictive drug and it was approved by the FDA to treat patients with incredible amounts of pain due to cancer, primarily. It wasn’t meant for anyone else outside of that category, but for a man and company who craved profits over lives, that fact clearly didn’t matter.
Kapoor was ordered to surrender his passport and wear an electric monitoring device. Kapoor, if convicted, could face serious prison time and for a man who pushed a drug that recently caused more overdose deaths in America than cocaine, meth and heroin, that’s poetic justice. Good news is that Capoor could spend years behind bars, and the DOJ’s long-term policy of special treatment for white collar criminals could possibly be coming to an end after eight years of sweetheart deals for Wall Street criminals.
