Plea Deal in NECC Related Case

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

The details of a plea agreement between a pharmacy technician and federal prosecutors shows that he lied when he was asked in 2015 about why he was paid $5,000 a month by a now defunct Westborough,Mass. drug company.
In a nine-page plea agreement filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, Mass. Claudio Pontoriero acknowledged that he lied when he was questioned by federal agents about the $355,000 he was paid by Ameridose, a drug company closely tied to the New England Compounding Center. Both firms are now out of business.
NECC was the source of contaminated steroids that caused a deadly 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak.
Under the plea agreement Pontoriero admitted to making materially false statements to investigators from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration when they interviewed him on Oct. 19, 2015.
In a July filing in the case, federal prosecutors said Pontoriero was paid the fees in return for recommending that his employer, Massachusetts General Hospital, purchase drugs from NECC and Ameridose.
The agreement is subject to Pontoriero's continued cooperation with federal prosecutors. The maximum sentence he could face is five years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Pontoriero was a pharmacy buyer for the hospital, but is no longer employed there.
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