(Bloomberg) -- An ex-stripper and Insys Therapeutics Inc. sales manager who once performed a lap dance on a doctor to win more business was sentenced to a year in prison for her role in a conspiracy to illegally boost prescriptions of the company’s addictive opioid drug.

Sunrise Lee, 40, who had no experience in pharmaceutical sales before being hired at Insys, oversaw part of what prosecutors said was a phony speaker program that funneled kickbacks to doctors who prescribed more of the company’s Subsys painkiller. She was one of seven executives, including founder John Kapoor, convicted in May of running a conspiracy that defrauded insurers.

Insys managers are being punished for actions the government says helped fuel a U.S. opioid epidemic, which left patients with debilitating addictions. Lee claimed she was exploited by Insys and that she didn’t know that the company’s policies were wrong. Her lawyers said she grew up in poverty.

U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs agreed that Lee was “extremely ill-equipped to deal with the situation at Insys and the pressures there,” but said Wednesday in Boston that she wasn’t a victim. “Women spend a lot of time seeking equal opportunities. You can’t look for equality and then want lower standards and less exacting conditions.”

Former Insys Chief Executive Officer Michael Babich is scheduled to be sentenced later Wednesday. Michael Gurry, 56, a former vice president who ran a call center for the Arizona-based company, got 33 months last week. Prosecutors are seeking 15 years for founder and former chief executive officer Kapoor, 76, who will be sentenced Thursday.

Read More: How the Opioid Crisis Evolved

Prosecutors had sought a six-year sentence for Lee, who they said was a key player in the plot. She was hired by Insys marketing executive Alec Burlakoff after he saw her in a Florida strip club and later began dating her. She later oversaw one-third of the Insys sales force.

The government argued Lee deserved no special pass for her lack of experience. “Once hired, Lee intentionally, and cogently, bribed doctors, then guided the sales reps and managers that she supervised to do the same,” prosecutors said in a court filing.

During the trial, a former Insys employee testified she and Lee were entertaining anesthesiologist Paul Madison in 2012 at a Chicago nightclub when Lee gave him a lap dance. During the trial, Lee’s attorney portrayed the lap dance as a joke. Madison was convicted on health-care fraud in 2018.

Hiring strippers at Insys was “the next unethical but logical step toward pharmaceutical dystopia” in an industry known for recruiting attractive college co-eds to work as sales reps after graduation, Lee’s attorney, Peter Horstmann, said in a court filing.

Burlakoff, who admitted to the conspiracy and testified during the trial, instructed Lee to “flaunt her physical beauty” in meetings with doctors. Burlakoff told her to “smile and close,” her lawyers said in a filing.

‘I Danced’

In court Wednesday, Lee told Burroughs she was just following the direction of her bosses and was “easily taken advantage of.” She added, “I traveled and, yeah, I danced, but I took care of my kids.”

Lee broke down in tears. “What I experienced at that company and what these guys did to me and a lot of other girls, they pushed me in that direction,” she said.

Horstmann told the judge that Lee grew up in poverty, though details of her childhood were filed with the court under seal. “I’ve never had a client who was on the back of a milk carton,” he said.

Three other former Insys executives also have been sentenced in the case and received prison time ranging from 27 months to 33 months, far below what prosecutors sought.

(Updates with comment from sentencing hearing and background on case.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Janelle Lawrence in New York at jlawrence62@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Steve Stroth, Peter Blumberg

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