NECC "Consultant" Gets Probation

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

A hospital pharmacy buyer who collected $355,000 to help channel business to a now defunct drug company was spared jail and placed on one year's probation today following a hearing in U.S. District Court in Boston, Mass.
U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin, following the agreed recommendation of prosecutors and a defense lawyer, imposed the sentence on Claudio Pontoriero, who is still working as a pharmacy buyer, but for a different hospital.
He also imposed a $40,000 restitution order and a $100 special assessment.
Pontoriero, a registered pharmacy technician, had entered a guilty plea to a charge that he lied to federal agents in 2015 when he was asked why he had been paid the $355,000 by Ameridose,LLC.
Under the plea agreement Pontorieo acknowledged that the payments of $5,000 per month over six years were not for web site services but for using his position at the Massachusetts General Hospital to steer business to Ameridose and a sister company, the New England Compounding Center(NECC).
Both companies closed down in the aftermath of the outbreak.
Pontoriero's role came to light during the investigation of the 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak, a deadly public health crisis caused by contaminated steroids shipped by NECC to health providers across the country.
Both Pontoriero's former and current employers wrote letters of support for him. He is currently employed at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital.
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