New Charges in Outbreak Probe

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

A former pharmacy technician at an unnamed Boston hospital has been charged with making false statements to federal agents in connection with payments of $355,000 he received from the now defunct firm blamed for a deadly fungal meningitis outbreak.
In a three-page information filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, Mass. federal prosecutors charged that Claudio Pontoriero, 40, lied about the payments he received between 2006 and 2012 from the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass. The payments were made in $5,000 monthly installments.
While Pontoriero told federal agents the payments were made in return for consulting work he performed for NECC,in fact he was being paid for using his influence to get his employer to buy drugs from NECC. In addition to purchases from NECC, Pontoriero was involved in drugs purchased from NECC's sister company Ameridose, located in Westborough, Mass.
Like NECC, Ameridose closed its doors in 2012 and never re-opened.
State licensing records show Pontoriero has a currently valid license as a pharmacy technician.
The information, which generally means the defendant has agreed to plead guilty to the charges, comes as the final trial date in the original outbreak indictment is approaching. Assistant U.S. Attorneys in the case are Amanda Strachan and George Varghese.
The 10 remaining defendants are set to go on trial Oct.2. Two defendants, Barry J. Cadden and Glenn A. Chin, already are serving prison sentences after their conviction on racketeering, mail fraud and related charges. Chin is serving an eight year sentence while Cadden has begun a nine year sentence. Cadden was president and part owner of NECC while Chin was a supervising pharmacist.
The hospital that employed Pontoriero was not disclosed in the three-page information and was described only as Hospital A.
Other records show Pontoriero was in charge of drug purchases at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2014. In 2007 Ponteroriero posted an entry on a pharmacy related web site highly praising both NECC and Ameridose. He listed himself as a drug purchaser for Mass. General.
NECC has been blamed as the source for thousands of vials of contaminated drugs which were shipped to hospitals and clinics in 23 states. The outbreak sickened 778 patients killing 76 of them. The indictments of Chin, Cadden and 12 others came in late 2014.
In a related development Wednesday one of the NECC defendants awaiting trial filed a motion to have the court authorize the issuance of a subpoena, but to keep secret the details of that subpoena along with a series of filings in support of the motion.
The filing for Joseph Evanosky, a former NECC employee, states that it wants the information also kept secret from federal prosecutors. It states that if Evanosky decides to use the information as part of his defense he will then disclose it to prosecutors.
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