> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.fdaweb.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Insys Founder Pays $5 Million Over Opioid Scheme
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/insys-founder-pays-5-million-over-opioid-scheme/
- Published: 2021-01-22T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T16:43:50.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Drugs, #legacy-id-D5148510

NJ attorney general **Gurbir S. Grewal** has announced a $5 million settlement with Insys Therapeutics founder **John N. Kapoor** to resolve allegations that he unlawfully bribed New Jersey doctors as part of a nationwide kickback scheme to boost sales of the company’s opioid drug Subsys. This is the first settlement in any state’s civil lawsuits against corporations and executives involved in manufacturing and fraudulently marketing opioid drugs, a [NJ release](https://www.njoag.gov/ag-grewal-announces-multi-million-dollar-settlement-with-insys-therapeutics-founder-john-kapoor-over-his-role-in-fueling-the-opioid-epidemic/?ref=fdaweb.com) says.

“The state’s 2017 complaint alleged that Kapoor directed and approved a campaign to fraudulently market Subsys — a sublingual fentanyl spray approximately fifty times stronger than heroin and one hundred times more potent than morphine — to boost sales in New Jersey and elsewhere,” the release says. “Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Subsys only for the narrow purpose of treating breakthrough pain in opioid-tolerant cancer patients, the state alleged that Kapoor arranged for Insys to bribe healthcare professionals to write Subsys prescriptions for other purposes and at higher doses than appropriate.”

In 2019, a federal jury in Boston convicted Kapoor and four other Insys executives of racketeering conspiracy in connection with the nationwide Insys bribery scheme. In 1/2020, Kapoor was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in federal prison.