Formal Indictment in Drug Compounding Case Gives New Details, Not Guilty Plea Entered

UPDATE: Glenn A. Chin entered a not guilty plea Thursday in a one count indictment charging him with mail fraud.

By Walter F. Roche Jr.
A formal one count indictment was issued today by a federal grand jury in Boston giving new details on the charges being leveled against a supervising pharmacist for the firm blamed for a nationwide fungal meningitis outbreak.
The five-page indictment spells out the charges against Glenn A. Chin, 46, who was in charge of maintaining sterility in special clean rooms at the New England Compounding Center, the now defunct firm blamed for the fatal outbreak.
The indictment states that Chin engaged in a scheme to defraud NECC's customers to enrich himself and NECC "by selling for a profit preservative free methylprednisolone acetate labeled as injectable."
Chin, the indictment states, failed to properly clean and maintain and oversee proper cleaning and maintenance of the NECC clean room.
He was charged with one count of mail fraud.
Chin was arrested last week as he was preparing to board a plane headed to China.  He had been scheduled to appear tomorrow at a show cause hearing on the original arrest warrant, but that session has now been canceled. Instead Chin will be formally arraigned on the grand jury charges in a 10 a.m. hearing.
According to the indictment, Chin was first employed as a pharmacist at NECC in 2004 and was promoted to a supervisory position in January of 2010.
In the new post, the court filing states, Chin was "overseeing all aspects of NECC's clean room."
The 2012 outbreak caused some 751 patients across the country to be sickened. Sixty-four died including 19 in Michigan, 16 in Tennessee  and 11 in Indiana.
The indictment states that in addition to personally compounding a lot of the fungus tainted drugs, Chin "instructed pharmacy technicians to fraudulently complete cleaning logs...purporting to show that the NECC clean room was properly cleaned and maintained."