An India-born founder of a drug company went on trial in the United States along with four others on charges of paying doctors millions of dollars in bribes to lure them into prescribing a highly addictive opioid painkiller meant solely for cancer patients. As per the charges, John Kapoor, 75, plotted to bribe doctors across the country to prescribe a fentanyl spray in order to outshine competitors and line his own pockets.
This was revealed by a federal prosecutor to jurors as the trial opened Monday in the District Court in Boston. Assistant US Attorney David Lazarus said Kapoor was so determined to make his Insys Therapeutics Inc a success that he turned it into a criminal enterprise to get the powerful painkiller in the hands of more patients, WGBH, a public radio station in Boston, reported. Recently, Indian-American doctor, Rajendra Bothra, 77, who was awarded Padmashri and was indicted in one of the largest healthcare fraud cases in the United States' history involving a USD 464 million conspiracy, was freed on a record-setting USD 7 million bond.
The winner of India's fourth-highest civilian award, along with five other physicians, was inducted in the alleged USD 464 million healthcare fraud conspiracy, which the federal government said fuelled the opioid epidemic. Despite the government's concern that the doctor has hidden money that could bankroll an escape to his native India, US District Judge Stephen Murphy granted the bond for him
According to Detroit news, Bothra, of Bloomfield Hills, who will be released on home confinement and tracked by a GPS tether, must identify all assets under penalty of perjury.
The report further said that being the lead defendant in one of the largest healthcare fraud cases in the US history, he must liquidate a USD 8.5 million retirement account to cover the bond, a process that could take three days.
