NECC Defendant Pleads Guilty

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

One of the remaining defendants in the criminal case stemming from the 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak entered a guilty plea today to mail fraud charges.
Scott M. Connolly, who continued to work as a pharmacy technician even after he had surrendered his license, entered the plea before U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns in his Boston, Mass. courtroom.
Under a plea agreement with federal prosecutors, racketeering and conspiracy charges were dropped.
Stearns set a Dec. 19 date for sentencing.
Connolly was one of 14 people indicted in late 2014 following a two year probe of a deadly fungal meningitis outbreak that sickened 778 patients, killing 76 of them.
Eight other defendants are scheduled to go on trial in early October.
Three of the 14 have entered guilty pleas.
All of those indicted were employees of the now defunct New England Compounding Center or a sales affiliate. State and federal officials concluded that fungus laden steroids from NECC caused the outbreak.
Connolly worked for NECC for about two years ending 2012 when the company was shutdown in the aftermath of the outbreak. He worked in a room where sterile drugs were prepared. According to the indictment Connolly used co-defendant Barry Cadden's sign on to the company computer system so that there would be no record of his actual role.
Cadden, who was NECC's president and part owner is serving a nine year sentence at a federal prison in Pennsylvania. During Cadden's trial there was extensive testimony about concerns that regulators would discover that Connolly was working as a pharmacy technician even though he had surrendered his license in the midst of an unrelated investigation.
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