Colorado Doctor Jeffrey Kesten Sentenced To Prison For Receiving Pharmaceutical Company's Bribes
DENVER (CBS4) -- A Colorado physician will spend two years behind bars for prescribing a fentanyl-based spray product to patients while receiving approximately $344,000 in bribes and "kickbacks" from the maker of the drug.
Dr. Jeffrey Kesten, 61, formerly of Evergreen, was sentenced Feb. 28 to 24 months in federal prison by a federal judge in Denver.
Per case documents, Kesten conspired with employees of Insys Therapeutics, the manufacturer of Subsys, a powerful sublingual fentanyl spray approved by the Federal Drug Administration in 2012 to treat sudden flare-ups of pain in cancer patients.
Kesten at that time was owner and operator of Red Rocks Center for Rehabilitation in Golden.
Beginning in late 2012 and through November 2015, Kesten was paid as a "national speaker" by Insys. Kesten was paid by the company to speak on the product's behalf, according to the grand jury indictment in the case. Kesten performed about 100 of these speaking events, although almost all of the engagements took place at his own clinic and with the same two members of his clinic's staff as his audience.
Kesten was also paid to speak to Insys employees.
Meanwhile, Kesten allowed an Insys sales representative to review his patient files and earmark which patients he could prescribe the fentanyl spray to, according to the indictment.
Members of the clinic's staff noticed an increase in the number of Subsys prescriptions to patients which paralled the number of Kesten's speaking engagements, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors claimed in the indictment that Kesten wrote prescriptions for the fentanyl spray worth millions of dollars.
"You have to be able to trust your doctor's medical judgment," U.S. Attorney Cole Finegan stated in a press release. "We'll hold physicians and medical professionals accountable for taking bribes and kickbacks, especially when they are prescribing powerful drugs to vulnerable patients."
The Colorado Medical Board leveled disciplinary action against Kesten in May of 2020. In a Letter of Admonition, the board found Kesten prescribed a 32-year-old patient pain medication despite his own recorded recognition of the patient's "drug-seeking" behavior and evidence of drug abuse history.
The state board suspended Kesten's medical license five months later.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration then investigated Kesten. He was prosecuted under the Anti-Kickback Statute.
The CEO of Insys was sentenced to prison in January 2020 for developing the scheme to bribe medical practitioners for Subsys prescriptions. Six other executives received prison sentences.
The company also paid $225 million to settle federal criminal and civil investigations. It declared bankruptcy the same month its CEO was sentenced, according to a profile of the company and its illegalities aired by CBS's 60 Minutes later that same year.
"As we've seen over the past several years fentanyl abuse has become an existential threat across the nation," DEA Denver Acting Special Agent in Charge David Olesky said in the press release announced Kesten's sentence. "There is no greater threat to our community than a doctor who violates a patient's trust with no regard to patient safety and well-being beyond what profits it can bring him. We applaud this sentencing and will continue to work with our counterparts in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General and the U.S. Attorney's Office to ensure other doctors who manipulate the system will be held accountable."
Note: An earlier version of this story described Dr. Kesten as working at Heart of the Rockies Regional Medical Center (HRRMC) in Salida at the time his license was suspended by the state. That was incorrect. Dr. Kesten rented space from an outlying HRRMC clinic in Buena Vista, but never worked for HRRMC.