Sunrise Lee, ex-stripper who worked as pharmaceutical company ‘closer’, gave lap dance to doctor at nightclub to boost sales of addictive fentanyl spray
- Racy details emerge about lengths Insys Therapeutic officials would go to market Subsys, the company’s addictive opioid painkiller, to doctors
- Case has put a spotlight on the US federal government’s efforts to go after those it says are responsible for fuelling the deadly drug crisis
A former pharmaceutical executive accused of joining in a scheme to bribe doctors into prescribing a powerful painkiller once gave a lap dance to a doctor the company was pressuring to get his patients on the drug, her one-time colleague said Tuesday.
Jurors heard the testimony on the second day of the closely watched federal trial in Boston against Insys Therapeutics founder John Kapoor and four other former executives.
They include Sunrise Lee, whom prosecutors have described as a former exotic dancer who was hired be a “closer’’ with doctors targeted in the Subsys marketing programme according to a government witness who prosecutors are expected to call in the case.
He had no experience in the pharmaceutical world.
The executives are charged with conspiring to pay doctors kickbacks in the form of fees for sham speaking events that were billed as opportunities for other physicians to learn about the drug, a highly addictive fentanyl spray.
In reality, prosecutors say, the events were mainly social gatherings for doctors and their friends to enjoy a fancy meal.