Drugs

MD Sentenced in Avanir Kickbacks

Former physician Deepak Raheja (Hudson, Ohio) was sentenced 2/3 to 30 months in prison after pleading guilty to pharmaceutical kickback conspiracy charges involving two Avanir Pharmaceuticals sales representatives. Raheja was ordered to surrender his medical license, pay $2.1 million in restitution, and a $50,000 fine.

Between 2/2011 and 7/2016, Raheja and co-defendants Frank Mazzucco and Gregory Hayslette, who were Avanir sales reps at the time, and former practicing physician Bhupinder Sawhny “conspired together to increase the number of prescriptions that Raheja and Sawhny wrote for Nuedexta, a prescription drug, in exchange for the payment of monetary kickbacks and other items of value,” according to a Justice Department release. Nuedexta is approved for treating pseudobulbar, which is characterized by involuntary, sudden, and frequent episodes of uncontrollable laughing and crying.

Avanir promoted Nuedexta through a speaker’s bureau. During the time period in question, Raheja gave over 200 speaking presentations at various restaurants and doctor’s offices and he was paid $1,500 for each engagement, the government says. “During this timeframe, court documents say that Raheja received approximately $331,550 in total payments from Avanir and wrote approximately 10,088 Nuedexta prescriptions – the highest in the country,” the release says.

Under the scheme, the government says Mazzucco and Hayslette “incentivized physicians, including Raheja and Sawhny to write Nuedexta prescriptions through various means, such as arranging speaker’s bureau programs, which were mostly social events; honoraria payments; the falsification of sign-in sheets from speaking engagements to maximize payments and providing food and beverages to doctors and their office staff.

Mazzucco and Hayslette are to be sentenced later this month. Sawhny has already been sentenced to three years’ probation and ordered to pay $40,126.22 in restitution.

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