A doctor in New York, practicing in Manhattan, pled guilty to conspiracy to violate the Anti-Kickback Statute in connection with a scheme to prescribe Subsys, a fentanyl spray, in exchange for bribes and kickbacks from the drug’s manufacturer, Insys Therapeutics.

Alexandru Burducea pled guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge Kevin Nathaniel Fox. He is a pain management doctor who admitted accepting tens of thousands of dollars in speaker fees from Insys in exchange for prescribing large amounts of their fentanyl-based spray, Subsys.

Subsys is a painkiller approximately 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of Subsys only for management of breakthrough pain in cancer patients. Prescriptions cost thousands of dollars, and Burducea wrote prescriptions that were reimbursed by not only commercial insurers but also Medicare and Medicaid.

In 2012 Insys launched a “Speakers Bureau” of doctors who would conduct programs aimed at educating other medical practitioners about Subsys. In reality Insys used this to induce doctors who acted as speakers to prescribe large amounts of Subsys by paying them Speaker Program fees. Most of the programs were really more like social affairs where there was little to no educational presentation about Subsys. Attendance sign-in sheets were often forged, as there were names and signatures of practitioners who were not present.

Burducea was an Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology at a Manhattan hospital and also practiced at an anesthesiology and pain management office associated with the hospital. Starting around September 2014 until around June 2015, he received about $68,400 in Speaker Program fees from Insys in exchange for prescribing large volumes of Subsys. Insys hired his girlfriend (now wife) to work as his sales representative and she was paid large commissions by Insys based on the volume of Subsys prescribed by her assigned doctors, one of whom was Burducea. He had never prescribed Subsys before September 2014 and became the 14^th-highest prescriber of it nationally by the second quarter of 2015, accounting for approximately $621,345 of total net sales in that quarter.

Burducea pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the Anti-Kickback Statute, and is scheduled to be sentenced on May 22, 2019.

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