The inside story of a band of entrepreneurial upstarts who made millions selling painkillers – until their scheme unravelled, placing them at the centre of a landmark criminal trial.

In the early 2000s, John Kapoor had already amassed a small fortune in pharmaceuticals when he founded Insys Therapeutics. A boom time for painkillers, he had developed a novel formulation of fentanyl, the most potent opioid on the market.

The drug was a niche product, approved only for cancer patients in dire condition. So he recruited an ambitious, persuasive team, who employed a variety of deceptive techniques, from zeroing in on suspect doctors, to falsifying patient records to deceiving insurance companies. Insys became a Wall Street sensation.

That is, until insiders reached their breaking point and blew the whistle. They sparked a sprawling investigation that would lead to a dramatic courtroom battle, breaking new ground in the government’s fight to hold the drug industry accountable in the spread of addictive opioids.