Two Arizona pain-management doctors — one in Scottsdale and the other in Tucson — will pay a combined sum of more than $500,000 after the Arizona Attorney General’s Office obtained consent judgments against them in connection with payments they received in an opioid prescription scheme.
Attorney General Mark Brnovich on Wednesday announced the settlements, which resolve his office’s claims that the doctors, Nikesh Seth of Scottsdale and Sheldon Gingerich of Tucson, took sham educational speaker fees from Chandler-based Insys Therapeutics in exchange for prescribing the company’s flagship drug, Subsys.
Insys itself no longer exists after declaring bankruptcy following guilty pleas and convictions of top executives in federal criminal cases in 2018 and 2019.
Subsys is a prescription cancer drug that contains fentanyl, an opioid that is 50 to 100 times stronger than heroin.
“People put a sacred trust in their doctors, especially when they’re prescribing opioids,” Brnovich said in a statement. “We will hold accountable everyone who violated that trust and improperly profited from Arizona’s opioid crisis."
