On June 16, Jeffrey Goldstein, a former Manhattan physician, was sentenced to 57 months in prison for taking $196,000 in kickbacks from Insys Therapeutics, a defunct Arizona-based opioid manufacturer. Goldstein pled guilty to conspiracy in 2019 for accepting purported “speaker fees” from Insys in 2013-15 to prescribe the company’s fentanyl spray, Subsys.
Goldstein was one of five Manhattan doctors who were arrested and charged in 2018 as part of Insys’s “Speakers Bureau.” The company’s fraud scheme was previously written about here.
U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said, “This sentence sends a loud and clear signal to the medical community that if you take bribes in return for prescribing, you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and risk significant prison time.” The U.S. Department of Justice began investigating Insys after former sales reps of the company brought whistleblower lawsuits under the False Claims Act.