John Kapoor

John Kapoor, the former billionaire and founder of fentanyl-spray manufacturer Insys Therapeutics was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison Thursday afternoon January 23 2020 in a Boston courtroom for his role in a conspiracy to bribe doctors to prescribe his company’s potent fentanyl painkiller to patients who didn’t need it. Kapoor stepped down from his role as Insys CEO and chairman in January 2017. That October he was arrested by the Department of Justice on charges of racketeering and conspiracy related to bribing doctors, committing mail and wire fraud and violating the Anti-Kickback law. In December 2018 Kapoor's net worth, which stemmed mostly from his stakes in Insys Therapeutics and a generic drug firm called Akorn, dropped below $1 billion for the first time since he joined the World's Billionaires’ ranks five years prior. His net worth peaked at $3.3 billion in October 2015. Kapoor is a serial entrepreneur who founded two pharmaceutical companies and guided them to exceptional success. The bulk of his wealth is concentrated in shares of Akorn Pharmaceuticals, an Illinois-based generics manufacturer that Kapoor has been involved with since the early 1990s, and INSYS Therapeutics, a cancer-treatment maker that went public in May 2013. Kapoor came to the U.S. from India in 1964 for a fellowship to study pharmaceutical sciences at the University at Buffalo. After earning his Ph.D. in 1972, he joined a struggling pharmaceuticals company LyphoMed, bought out his bosses in an LBO and in 1983 he took it public. He sold his stake in 1990, netting $100 million -- start-up capital for his subsequent pharma projects. Outside of his companies, he also supports efforts to fight cancer through the John and Editha Kapoor Charitable Foundation, named after his late wife Editha, who died of breast cancer. Kapoor has a small chain of fast-casual Indian restaurants in Arizona called Bombay Spice as well as higher-end, traditional Indian eatery Marigold Maison in Phoenix. He owns the Roka Akor Japanese eateries in Chicago, Scottsdale and San Francisco.