By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive, Patreon
SDNY COURTHOUSE, June 16 – Amid the opioid and corporate drug-dealing crisis, Doctor Jeffrey Goldstein and his two lawyers arrived to plead guilty to anti-kickback violations on August 16, 2019.
It had been announced: "11:00 a.m. – Proceeding of interest in U.S. v. Jeffrey Goldstein – the defendant is charged with participating in a scheme to receive bribes and kickbacks in the form of fees for sham educational programs from a pharmaceutical company in exchange for prescribing millions of dollars’ worth of a potent fentanyl-based spray manufactured by the company – in Magistrate court (courtroom 5A, 500 Pearl Street)."
Inner City Press went to the Mag Court at the appointed time but there was another case on, an attempted guilty plea to extortion by a man from Peru who told Mag Judge Henry Pitman that he hadn't actually intended to hurt the victim. His lawyer - to whom Judge Pitman asked, Are you texting? - whispered with him then he said he had meant harmed. Whatever they say, this led to visible mirth among Team Goldstein.
When it was Goldstein's turn, the Peruvian being transferred next with this dubious plea to District Judge Lorna G. Schofield, Judge Pitman asked him if he is on medication. Yes, for anxiety. He allocuted to taking speaker fees from Insys to prescribe Subsys fentanyl spray to his patents. Then he walked out of the SDNY courthouse the same way he walked in, while the Peruvian was taken back in shackles to the MCC.
Now after all that time on pre-trial release, and with more to come, this from the US Attorney's Office on June 16, 2021: " announced today that JEFFREY GOLDSTEIN, a doctor who practiced in New York, New York, was sentenced today in Manhattan federal court to 57 months in prison for conspiring to violate the Anti-Kickback Statute, in connection with a scheme to prescribe Subsys, a potent fentanyl-based spray, in exchange for bribes and kickbacks from Subsys’s manufacturer, Insys Therapeutics. GOLDSTEIN previously pled guilty, on August 16, 2019, before U.S. Magistrate Judge Henry B. Pitman, and was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Kimba M. Wood."
The case is US v. Goldstein, 18-cr-217 (Wood)
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