U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Alabama/Handout/Reuters
A former pharmaceutical CEO accused of bribing doctors to prescribe his company’s fentanyl-based cancer treatment agreed Wednesday to plead guilty to conspiracy and mail fraud, according to a tweet from Law360 reporter Aaron Leibowitz. Reuters reports that a group of top executives at Insys, including ex-CEO Michael Babich, are accused of conspiring to pay doctors kickbacks for prescribing Subsys, a fentanyl-based cancer drug. Fentanyl has since become the deadliest drug in America, accounting for 29 percent of fatal overdoses in 2016. Babich isn’t the first executive to fall; Insys’ ex-head of sales Alec Burlakoff has already pleaded guilty. But founder John Kapoor and the four other named defendants have maintained their innocence. As a result of the plea, Babich will also forfeit $3.5 million.
