Sunrise Lee was a stripper at Rachel’s in West Palm Beach, Fla., when she danced for a regular singer who slipped her phone number.
But Alec Burlakoff wasn’t the only client who propositioned her for sex: in fact he recruited her to push doctors to overprescribe highly addictive opioids.
“Dancers are the best salespeople,” she told Lee, a single mother of two who was desperate for a break.
Within weeks, he was a mid-Atlantic sales manager for Insys Therapeutics — and part of a brazenly corrupt ring that pushed doctors to prescribe dangerous quantities of fentanyl spray, and far exceed its use.
Now Lee’s story is being told in the Netflix movie “Pain Hustlers,” which was released Friday and stars Emily Blunt, Chris Evans and Catherine O’Hara..
Blunt plays Liza Drake, a blue-collar single mother who has just lost her job and is trying to make ends meet.
Sunrise Lee started working for Insys Therapeutics in 2012 after meeting Alec Berkoff at a strip club in West Palm Beach where she was working as an exotic dancer at the time. Boston Globe via Getty Images “Dancers are the best salespeople,” Berkoff told Lee, a single mother of two desperate for a break as she worked at Rachel’s in Palm Beach. VIP Rachel’s Palm Beach/Facebook From 2012 to 2015, Insys officials, according to prosecutors, bribed doctors with hundreds of thousands of dollars to host speaking events aimed at educating and touting the benefits of Subsys, a highly potent fentanyl-based opioid painkiller that the FDA approved in 2012 to treat severe cancer pain. A true-life story is the plot for “Pain Hustlers” on Netflix. Brian Douglas/Netflix © 2023
He lands a job at a failing pharmaceutical company following a chance meeting with sales rep Pete Brenner (Evans) who lures him down a morally bankrupt path when he becomes a participant in a dangerous extortion scheme that involves bribing doctors to provide the fentanyl-based drug — story based on Insys.
Insys Therapeutics Subsys spray was approved by the FDA in 2012 solely to provide cancer patients with relief from intense “breakthrough” pain.
But Insys bribed doctors to give it to people who didn’t have cancer, and then cheated health insurance companies that didn’t want to cover it for non-cancer patients.
The corruption plot is the latest chapter of the opioid epidemic to get screen treatment, following Hulu’s “Dopesick” miniseries starring Michael Keaton as a doctor who becomes as addicted as his patient, and Netflix’s “Empire of Pain” about the Sackler family, whose Purdue pharmaceuticals have sparked a crisis.
Lee, 43, was sentenced to a year and a day in prison in 2020 for the racketeering conspiracy alleged by the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts. He served about eight months.REUTERS “Now that I think about it, it definitely makes sense that he’s looking,” Lee told The Post meeting Alec Burlakoff, vice president of Chandler, Arizona-based pharmaceutical company Insys Therapeutics, pictured here, in 2012 at the strip club where he worked. Reuters
Lee was jailed for more than a year for his role in the plot, with a jury hearing that he gave lap dances to doctors as part of the scheme — though he still protests his innocence.
Lee’s part in the opioid crisis began when she danced for Burlakoff in the summer of 2012. She told him she was saving money for a new life as a Michigan State University student.
In response, he said, “I remember him telling me he was a VP sales manager in pharmaceuticals and thought that dancers were the best salespeople. It definitely made sense that he was stalking.”
He was hired in September after Burlakoff helped him prepare for an interview for the Scottsdale, Arizona company.
Insy’s opioid corruption scandal is played out in the upcoming Netflix film “Pain Hustlers,” starring Emily Blunt, Chris Evans and Catherine O’Hara following a struggling single mother who gets a lucrative opportunity in pharmacy sales and gets caught up in her bribery scheme to sell. highly addictive painkiller.Brian Douglas/Netflix
“It’s the opportunity of a lifetime,” Lee told The Post. “I thought, ‘I can actually have a chance to take care of my kids and let the schooling I’m doing pay off.'”
Insys, led by founder John Kapoor, is desperate to join the opioid-fueled gold rush, and is willing to break the law to do so. It wants doctors to dispense more of its spray at higher and higher doses.
Executives came up with a system where Insys would hold “speaking events” for doctors who prescribe the drug, paying them a fee to participate.
In fact the event was fake. Instead of being paid to talk about their medical practice, they are paid cash to show up, “talk” to an empty room then go out for fancy dinners that often turn into alcohol-fueled debauchery.
Blunt plays Liza Drake, a blue-collar single mother who has just lost her job and is trying to make ends meet. Brian Douglas/Netflix In the film Blunt’s character (left) Liza Drake, gets a job at a failed pharmaceutical company following a chance meeting with sales representative Pete Brenner (Evans) and becomes a pioneer in a dangerous extortion scheme involving bribing doctors to dispense fentanyl-based drugs. . Brian Douglas/Netflix
On a drunken nightclub visit in Chicago, after one of the dinner parties in 2012, a witness told the trial of Lee, Kapoor and three other Insys executives that the former stripper gave Dr. Paul Madison lap dance.
Madison, the jury heard, ran a “shady operation” at the mall — a pill mill — and was later convicted of health care fraud for soliciting fake prescriptions.
The scheme was busted by the feds in 2016 and Lee, who managed a third of the sales force, is one of a series of executives charged with RICO offenses.
Kapoor got 66 months, its CEO Michael Babich got 30 months, and three other executives were also jailed.
In 2020, Lee was sentenced to a year and a day and served eight months in a Kentucky prison.
Lee denied claims by a former Insys official that he gave a doctor a lap dance. He said he felt he was also a victim of Insys executives: “They had a plan to set up vulnerable, inexperienced, very green people like me,” Lee told The Post who was recruited by Insys.REUTERS
Lee, now working in security technology sales in Grand Rapids, MI, said he felt he was also a victim of Insys executives. He and Burlakoff had a volatile relationship while he worked there.
“They have a plan to set up vulnerable, inexperienced, very green people like me,” Lee told The Post who was recruited by Insys.
Now 43, he continues to claim there was little wrong with what he did from 2012 to 2015, saying he had raised concerns about doctors not turning up at events – one of the ways the bribery scheme worked – but was met with an unpleasant reception and even threats to be fired.
“I don’t send money to doctors, it all comes from the marketing department — why is the marketing department never part of this? Because I work in this company where people commit crimes, I can be held accountable with them for that crime.”
Lee poses with his son, Dan. Today, he works in security technology sales. He told The Post he’s trying to get his life back on track, expressing regret “for everyone affected by the opioid crisis.” Courtesy of Sunrise Lee
He told The Post that he is now trying to get his life back together — an option not open to people who die of a fentanyl overdose.
“My life is hell. It’s better now … but it’s bad. It’s an absolute nightmare. I don’t know if I’ll ever be the same.
“It’s hard to put into words but I’ll try. My heart is broken from it all.
“The pain I feel for everyone affected by the opioid crisis will remain ingrained in me forever. I pray that this will never happen again.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
