Topic: Kickbacks

Barbie Rivera alleges that pharmaceutical companies and Florida International University offered financial incentives to school principals for enrolling children in drug studies. She claims she was offered $100 for student contact info, $500 for mental health checklists, and $5,000 for every child successfully placed on a new medication like Intuniv. The hosts express outrage at the potential for widespread corruption in the education system.

Federal prosecutors have charged executives from Insys Therapeutics, including founder John Kapoor, for a scheme involving kickbacks to doctors who prescribed the fentanyl spray Subsys. The company allegedly used "speaker programs" and hired doctors' relatives as bribes to encourage off-label prescriptions. The lack of mainstream media coverage on this specific pharmaceutical scandal is noted.

The Association of National Advertisers discovered that major ad agencies are buying large blocks of media inventory and reselling them to clients at a hidden markup. This practice replaces the traditional 15% commission model with a less transparent and potentially corrupt system.

A corruption scandal in Detroit involves a dozen principals, including one previously featured on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, accused of taking kickbacks from a vendor. During the news report, an ABC correspondent appears to make a strange, high-pitched sound. The hosts debate whether this was a digital signal processing (DSP) error or evidence of an "AI glitch" in the broadcast.