Alec Burlakoff

I was the SVP of sales for Insys Pharmaceuticals. I inappropriately incentivized doctors to write more than $1 billion worth of prescriptions, which led the company to being the best performing IPO of 2013.

Interview: 60 Minuites: 'Alec Burlakoff: The rise and fall of a pharmaceutical opioid sales executive':

-After a 10-week trial in a Boston federal court, Burlakoff and six other executives were sentenced to prison for their part in a racketeering scheme based on a conspiracy to recklessly and illegally boost profits from Subsys, a potent, fast-acting fentanyl intended for cancer pain patients. This landmark criminal case was the first to bring pharmaceutical executives to trial for their role in fueling the opioid epidemic, potentially indicating a shift in how the government approaches white collar crime.

Interview: Frontline: 'Bribing Doctors, Making Millions':

-"The only thing that mattered was the bottom line. Before you broached the subject of bribing a physician, you need to do a whole lot of homework. How much money is enough? There is no amount. If and when push came to shove, and someone with Insys Therapeutics had a conscience, might raise an alarm, it just disappeared."

"I thought I was being a good soldier. I thought that I needed to compartmentalize these different things — the opioid epidemic, the people suffering, the deaths, all these lives that are being affected, I managed to successfully compartmentalize that in some part of my brain where it wasn’t in the forefront on a daily basis because it if was, then I would not be able to do my job."

Burlakoff explained the inner workings of the company, and what it took to be a top sales executive at what prosecutors would come to call an organized criminal enterprise.

Burlakoff and his team pursued doctors with the understanding that "98% of your business is going to come from 2% of your doctors." He explains that a very small subset of doctors are "willing to play the game," and that he and his team had to search low, high, far and wide to find them. The Insys sales reps also targeted doctors that would be most susceptible to bribery and manipulation after "profiling them," and "learning what makes them tick."

But this began to be too much for Burlakoff. He says the work caused him "to lose a piece of his soul each day." "Why didn't I walk out?" he asked. "Because I was a greedy, selfish moron who basically looked up to these people in these high-level positions.

In November 2018, Burlakoff pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy and was sentenced to 26 months in a Federal prison.

Since my release, I have been publicly speaking on the importance of incorporating ethics and compliance trainings to salesforces. With profound lessons learned from federal authorities and massive success, I have seen it all. I can help people succeed in sales without resorting to inappropriate practices.

My name is Alec Burlakoff. In this story, I offer the hard lessons I learned from a career in sales.

Sales professionals—or those who oversee sales professionals—may find value in reading about decisions that led to my demise.

Who am I?

Well, I am a man who has had to reinvent himself on several occasions. My career began as a teacher and adolescent coach. Wanting to build a higher income stream, I transitioned into pharmaceutical sales. Over two decades, I went from cold calling on doctors to leading sales teams—passing along the strategies I learned to generate more than $3 billion worth of sales.

My sales career for big pharma came to a screeching halt when authorities launched a government investigation against the tactics I used to generate more orders. As the Vice President of Sales for Insys Pharmaceuticals, I was the first person to plead guilty to crimes related to the way we charged ahead to make higher sales numbers.

What crimes?

I induced physicians to write more prescriptions for the medications that I represented. This practice led to higher sales and higher commissions. It also led to government investigations, criminal prosecutions, federal prison terms, and monetary fines.

The ordeal forced me to recalibrate and make amends for the harm I caused. To begin, I had to introspect. Through that process, I came to realize how my bad decisions victimized so many people.

This book reveals the hard lessons I learned from a career of selling medications to doctors. Writing this story is another step I’m taking to make amends and reconcile with society for the crimes I committed.