The Arizona Attorney General’s Office has obtained a consent judgment with Dr. Steve Fanto, a Scottsdale-based pain management doctor. Dr. Fanto is now barred from receiving any money or substantial gifts from any pharmaceutical companies while holding a license to practice medicine in the State of Arizona.
The settlement resolves the State’s claims that Dr. Fanto took hundreds of thousands of dollars in sham educational “speaker fees” from Chandler-based Insys Therapeutics in exchange for prescribing Subsys, a highly addictive opioid prescription drug that contains fentanyl.
Under the settlement, Dr. Fanto must also forfeit all of the money he collected from Insys for alleged sham “speaker fees” and pay an additional $152,000 in civil penalties to the State.
The settlement is the latest development in the multi-defendant lawsuits filed by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office (AGO) related to Insys’s illegal and unethical opioid sales practices. Previous settlements included a $9.5 million settlement with Insys’s former Vice President of Sales, a $2 million settlement with the former CEO of Insys, and over $500,000 in combined settlements with two other Arizona doctors who accepted speaker fees from Insys Therapeutics. Insys itself pleaded guilty to federal charges, declared bankruptcy, and ceased to exist. The AGO’s consumer fraud lawsuit continues against John Kapoor, the founder and former President of Insys.