It’s the season finale of Fraudsters, and we’re reluctantly exploring the grim origins of America’s opioid crisis. From the Sackler family’s OxyContin empire, built on shameless marketing, fake science, and philanthropy-as-image-laundering, to John Kapoor’s Insys Pharmaceuticals, a scrappy underdog peddling fentanyl sprays, we unravel the fraud that fueled this epidemic. With half a million deaths, shattered communities, and contrasting fates for these corporate villains, it’s a class war in a pill bottle. Who paid the price—and who walked free?

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Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/13/meet-the-sacklers-the-family-feuding-over-blame-for-the-opioid-crisis

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/business/01sackler.html

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a12775932/sackler-family-oxycontin/

https://theconversation.com/a-dangerous-method-in-defence-of-freuds-psychoanalysis-5989#:~:text=According to Freud's theory%2C mental,caused by early childhood trauma.

https://www.bmj.com/content/suppl/2005/07/18/331.7509.DC1

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/12-napp-pharmaceutical-holdings-rhmq8hnpfgx

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sackler-family-oxycontin-opioid-drug-scandal-british-connection-q3wd30s35

https://lithub.com/on-terminal-pain-and-the-origins-of-the-end-of-life-movement/

https://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/27/obituaries/dr-arthur-sackler-dies-at-73-philanthropist-and-art-patron.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/business/raymond-sackler-dead-of-purdue-pharma.html

al-health-data/

https://casetext.com/case/kottayil-v-insys-therapeutics-inc/

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1516479/000143774915019892/R12.htm

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/page/file/947866/dl?inline

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/page/file/1010246/dl?inline

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/health/insys-opioid-bankruptcy.html?searchResultPosition=6

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/14/business/doubts-raised-about-off-label-use-of-subsys-a-strong-painkiller.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer

Links to clips:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaxlJXpwkzs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTR3R2jYw4Q&t=1127s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkeQifzvSNE&t=80s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtwFZwjCSTE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w327H5VNT9A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s8kybr-YFU

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