Federal investigators said Thursday that a pharmaceutical sales manager helped organize a kickback scheme that paid tens of thousands of dollars in illicit fees to medical professionals in Connecticut and elsewhere who prescribed a powerful painkiller his employer manufactured.

The pay-off scheme probably cost the Medicare program millions of dollars by inducing physicians and other medical professionals to prescribe the painkiller to patients who were not eligible for the treatments under heath federal guidelines, authorities said.

FBI agents on Thursday arrested Jeffrey Pearlman, a district sales manager for Arizona-based Insys Therapeutics, for paying kickbacks in relation to a federal health care program, which carries a sentence of up to five years. Pearlman, 49 of Edgewood, N.J., collected a $95,000 quarterly bonus at one point in 2013 based on his success at selling Subsys, a powerful, fentanyl-based oral spray approved by the FDA to manage break through pain experienced by cancer patients.

Insys and Subsys were not mentioned by name in legal filings associated with the arrest, but multiple officials confirmed the identities.

Pearlman is accused of arranging for $83,000 in kickbacks to just one nurse who was authorized to write prescriptions by her ex-employer, the Comprehensive Pain and Headache Treatment Center of Derby. Heather Alfonso, an advanced practice nurse, is cooperating with federal investigators and was among the highest Subsys prescribers in the country.

Alfonso has been charged with taking kickbacks and is cooperating with investigators in hopes of leniency.

Federal authorities said several of Alfonso's patients, who are Medicare Part D beneficiaries and who were prescribed the drug, did not have cancer, but were taking Subsys for chronic pain. Medicare and most private insurers will not pay for the drug unless the patient has an active cancer diagnosis and an explanation that the drug is needed to manage the patient's cancer pain.

Federal prosecutors said that Pearlman arranged hundreds of "sham" speakers programs to pay off doctors and others qualified nurses for prescribing Subsys. The programs were ostensibly education gatherings to inform health professionals about pain management. In reality, federal officials said the programs were social gatherings at which Pearlman picked up the bill for food and drink and paid prescribers to attend.

The FBI said Pearlman's sales territory was Connecticut, Rhode island, New Jersey and New York and he arranged hundreds of speakers programs across the country. People involved in the investigation said it is continuing and that additional arrests are expected.

Pearlman was presented in federal district court in New Haven Thursday and released on a $200,000 bond.