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# 2 Former Insys Execs Sentenced Over Opioids
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/2-former-insys-execs-sentenced-over-opioids/
- Published: 2020-01-22T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T15:59:30.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Drugs, FDA Policy/General, #legacy-id-D5145905

Two former Insys executives were sentenced to more than two years in federal prison each for their roles in a bribery and kickback scheme that prosecutors said helped to fuel the opioid crisis. Former national sales director **Richard Simon** was sentenced to 33 months in prison and former regional sales director **Joseph Rowan** received a 27-month sentence. Both men are also to serve three years of probation after prison, forfeit more than $2 million, and pay a still-undetermined amount of restitution, the Associated Press reports.

Prosecutors had sought more than 10 years in prison for each, while lawyers for the two had argued for a year or less, the news service says. The two are among seven former company leaders being sentenced this month in the scheme.

Prosecutors said Insys employees paid millions of dollars in bribes to doctors nationwide to overprescribe Subsys, a powerful, addictive fentanyl-based painkiller for cancer patients. The case was considered the first to hold an opioid maker and its executives criminally liable for a drug crisis that has claimed nearly 400,000 lives over two decades, according to AP. Since then, a handful of other pharmaceutical companies have faced criminal charges over the national epidemic.