Thread by @nateraymond

I'm back in court today for the second day of trial in the case of five former #Insys Therapeutics executives and managers including founder John Kapoor who are accused of bribing doctors to prescribe an addictive fentanyl spray.

The first witness will be Holly Brown, a former Insys sales representative, prosecutors said in court this morning.

Brown testifies that while at Insys, she was trained to not emphasize while promoting its fentanyl spray Subsys that it was only meant for cancer patients.

“The idea was that physicians could use this product in any way they liked,” Brown said, adding that they were marketing Subsys not just to oncologists but pain doctors.

Earlier in her testimony, Brown described attending a training event for Insys sales staff in Arizona, where the company is based. Asked about what compliance training she received, Brown said: “I don’t recall there being a lot of emphasis on that.”

Brown, who was Chicago based, said to find doctors to promote Subsys to, Insys gave her and other sales staff iPads with pre-loaded data with ranked lists of physicians. “It was based on the amounts of opiate products they were prescribing.”

After struggling to sell Subsys, in mid-2012, Insys brought on a new VP of sales, Alec Burlakoff, who Brown says wanted to “throw the book out” and encouraged sales staff to just find their “whale prescriber” who would prescribe Subsys.

Brown is now testifying about her experiences with Dr. Paul Madison, an Illinois doctor who was a high prescriber of opioids and became a paid speaker for Insys.

She said Madison was unlike other doctors she interacted with. He worked in a “dingy strip mall in a not so nice part of town.” Google searches showed “unsavory information” about him and a doctor he worked with who lost his license, she said.

Note, by the way, that Madison himself recently went on trial in Chicago and was convicted of defrauding insurers. reuters.com/article/health…

A lengthy sidebar is underway after the defense objected to the introduction of an email Brown sent.

Brown says that in fall 2012, she told Insys CEO Michael Babich in an e-mail that she was uncompforhable with Dr. Madison, who she thought ran a “fairly shady” medical office.

Brown says her supervisor, defendant Sunrise Lee, turned Dr. Madison into a Subsys prescriber after meeting with him for drinks.

Lee is a former exotic dancer, prosecutors say. Asked about Lee’s approach to sales, Brown says: “It was more social in nature, definitely sexually suggestive.”

Brown says that at a Chicago club, she witnessed this interaction between Sunrise Lee and Dr. Madison: “She was sitting on his lap, kind of bouncing around.” Prosecutors have said Lee gave Madison a lap dance.

An email that Brown wrote describing Madison’s practice as a “pill mill” was just entered as an exhibit. Here’s an excerpt.