Conigliaro Faces Local Scrutiny

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

One of the remaining defendants in the criminal case stemming from the deadly 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak is coming under fire for his involvement in a recycling business, the same business highlighted in testimony in the recent trials of two co-defendants.
Fire officials in Framingham, Mass. have placed a freeze on any additional combustible materials being placed at a facility run by Conigliaro Industries, a company headed by Gregory Conigliaro.
Conigliaro was a vice president and part owner of the New England Compounding Center, the then adjacent company blamed for the outbreak that took the lives of at least 76 patients among nearly 800 who were  sickened by fungus riddled NECC drugs.
Conigliaro is charged along with others of  conspiring to defraud the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by misrepresenting the fact that NECC was not a small family run drug compounding pharmacy as they contended, but rather a manufacturer of drugs, subject to FDA inspection and regulation.
Conigliaro, who also is a licensed real estate salesman in Massachusetts, and the other remaining defendants are scheduled to go on trial in October.
According to Framingham Fire Chief Joseph C. Hicks, the freeze was ordered after the company failed to comply with an earlier order to reduce the volume of waste being stored at the property at 30 Fountain Street.
"Conigliaro's outside recycling yard has a fire code permit to store a specific quantity of combustible materials," Hicks wrote in an email response to questions. "On a recent inspection it was noted that the combustible storage was excessive. The facility was ordered to stop accepting combustible goods and reduce the quantity on its site," Hicks added.
He said "the compliance plan is to reduce and clean up the combustible storage," which is currently in progress.
For some local residents problems at the facility date back years.
City Councilor Judith Grove, whose district includes the recycling center, said questions were being raised long before the well publicized indictments and subsequent trials stemming from a two year grand jury probe of the fungal meningitis outbreak.
Recently, she said, the problems have visibly worsened as the volume of materials coming into the facility have increased while the market for recycled materials has apparently declined. She noted concerns have also increased as new developments have come to the neighborhood.
She said major rail lines pass close to the property.
One former town meeting member, George Lewis, has been cataloguing problems at the center for several years and has posted photos and videos showing rat infestation.
The rat problem has also drawn the attention of local health officials who have indicated they will up their monitoring efforts in the coming Spring.
Lewis said that prior to the 2014 indictments he spoke with FBI agents investigating NECC and pointed out the health hazards of having a drug company on the same property used for recycling mattresses and other materials.
"I felt it could be the cause of the meningitis," he said. "They should never have been allowed to go there," he said referring to the recycling business.
On its web site Conigliaro Industries boasts of its many clients including public school districts and other public agencies.
"We are uniquely qualified to serve the needs of your city or town," an entry web site states.
Conigliaro is facing the criminal charge despite two separate efforts to have the conspiracy charge dismissed.
U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns rebuffed both efforts concluding it would be up to a jury to decide his guilt or innocence.
The indictment charges that Conigliaro wrote a letter to the FDA on March 4, 2004 stating that NECC was a small scale family run pharmacy and not a manufacturer.
In the 2017 trial of Glenn Chin, a supervising pharmacist at NECC, Michael Mangiacotti, an FDA criminal investigator, testified that one of the first things they noticed when they arrived at NECC to begin the meningitis investigation was the nearby presence of the Conigliaro recycling operation and its potential as a source of contamination.
Chin was convicted of racketeering and mail fraud charges and will begin serving an eight-year federal prison sentence March 14.
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