UES Doc Who Took Bribes For Fentanyl Prescriptions Gets Jail Time

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A doctor based on the Upper East Side who was convicted of prescribing an addictive painkiller in exchange for bribes was sentenced Wednesday to nearly five years in prison.

Jeffrey Goldstein, 51, had his 57-month sentence handed down Wednesday by U.S. District Court Judge Kimba Wood — more than three years after he was first indicted and almost two years after Goldstein pleaded guilty to violating federal anti-bribery laws.

Goldstein, an osteopathic doctor, owned his own medical office on the Upper East Side — on East 69th Street near Third Avenue, according to previous listings.

For years, however, Goldstein racked up about $196,000 in supposed speaker's fees from Insys Therapeutics, the manufacturer of a "potent fentanyl-based spray," federal prosecutors wrote. Insys launched its "Speakers Bureau" in 2012, ostensibly enlisting doctors to educate fellow practitioners about its product.

In reality, the program encouraged doctors to "prescribe large volumes" of the painkiller, while the speakers' events were "social affairs" whose sign-in sheets were forged, prosecutors said.

Goldstein was indicted in 2018 along with four other doctors who also practiced on the Upper East Side: Gordon Freedman, Todd Schlifstein, Dialecti Voudouris and Alexandru Burducea.

Lap dances, drinks, holiday party

Besides the bribes, Goldstein also got other perks: in one instance, workers from Insys took him and Schlifstein to a strip club in Manhattan, where the company spent about $4,100 on a private room, drinks and lap-dances for the two doctors. In another case, Goldstein got Insys to pay for his office's holiday party.

All told, Goldstein was the sixth-highest prescriber of the painkiller during the fourth quarter of 2014, accounting for about $809,275 of the product's sales, authorities said. For his efforts, he was Insys's fifth-highest-paid speaker that year.

In addition to his prison time, Goldstein, a New Rochelle resident, was ordered to forfeit $196,600 and sentenced to two years of supervised release.

Voudouris, Schlifstein and Burducea have already been sentenced to time served, two years and 57 months in prison, respectively. Freedman is set to be sentenced next month.

"Goldstein put his own patients at risk in order to satisfy his own greed, and will now spend time in federal prison for recklessly prescribing this highly addictive and powerful opioid," Audrey Strauss, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a news release.

"This sentence sends a loud and clear signal to the medical community that if you take bribes in return for prescribing, you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and risk significant prison time."

Insys Therapeutics filed for bankruptcy in 2019 after paying a $225 million settlement for over-prescribing Subsys, the fentanyl spray. The drug was sold that year to another pharmaceutical company that promised to market it on a more limited basis.

Fentanyl is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine and has been a major driver of the opioid crisis in the United States.

Previous coverage: UES Doctors Indicted In Fentanyl Kickback Scheme, Feds Say