New Hampshire physician assistant guilty of Insys opioid kickback scheme | Crime

A physician assistant who at one point was one of the largest prescribers of opioids in the state was found guilty Monday of receiving nearly $50,000 in kickbacks from Insys Therapeutics Inc.

A federal jury convicted Christopher Clough, 44, of Dover, of seven counts of receiving kickbacks and one count of conspiracy to receive kickbacks. The verdict concluded a five-day trial in U.S. District Court in Concord.

In an interview, U.S. Attorney for New Hampshire Scott Murray said health care decisions need to be made by doctors and their patients.

“Corporate money shouldn’t be involved in the process of making health care decisions because it can corrupt the process,” he said.

District Court Judge Joseph Laplante allowed Clough to be released on bail until his March 29 sentencing hearing. Clough walked past a reporter and did not speak.

His father said the convictions are a miscarriage of justice and that his son was set up.

“He was paid as a speaker and that’s all he knew that was going on,” said Richard Clough. “He wrote the ‘scripts because he believed in the drug.”

The Clough trial took place as federal cases play out in courts in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts involving corporate and sales officials of the Arizona-based Insys.

Company founder John Kapoor is expected to face a jury in the near future in a Boston federal court.

Testimony in the trial included Natalie Levine, the Insys sales representative whose territory included New Hampshire and who has pleaded guilty in the kickback scheme.

During the trial, prosecutors said Clough willingly participated in a scheme to write prescriptions of Subsys, a powerful fentanyl spray manufactured by Insys.

The drug is licensed for use for cancer patients already on painkillers when they undergo a sudden spike in pain.

Clough and Insys sales reps hosted sales meetings in expensive restaurants on the Seacoast and in Boston where he was expected to speak about Subsys. But the meetings were sparsely attended. Guests at one meeting were just his children.

Clough received $50,000 in speaker fees over a period of about a year. Insys sold $2 million in Subsys through Clough, Murray said.

Prosecutors say he often started patients on high doses of the addictive fentanyl spray and rebuffed patients and their family members who stated that they no longer wanted the drug.

Richard Clough said authorities offered his son a plea deal that involved five years in prison. Now he will be sentenced on eight crimes, each of which carry a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison.

Clough worked for Somersworth Pain Care of New Hampshire, which at its height had 10 clinics across the state. He was one of the largest prescribers of opioid and pain-related medication in the state earlier this decade, according to previous newspaper articles.

In 2016, the New Hampshire Board of Medicine permanently revoked his license.