By Walter F. Roche Jr.
Boston- An FBI agent testified today that one of the defendants now on trial on racketeering and mail fraud charges told him drugs were being shipped before promised testing and some of his colleagues had been dumping drugs as a federal investigation began to close in on the them.
FBI agent Philip Sliney said the defendant, Joseph Evanosky, also told him that he and others falsified cleaning logs at the New England Compounding Center, the company blamed for a deadly fungal meningitis outbreak.
Testifying in U.S. District Court, Sliney detailed his Nov. 8, 2012 interview with Evanosky, a licensed pharmacist and one of six former NECC employees now on trial following a two year probe of a deadly fungal meningitis outbreak, that first became public in Nashville.
Sliney said he and another agent interviewed Evanosky at his Westborough home, just a few miles from NECC's then offices and headquarters.
Sliney said they knocked on Evanosky's door and he invited them into his home agreed to be interviewed at a dining room table.
He said Evanosky, who was seated only a few feet away in the seventh floor courtroom of U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns, agreed to discuss his involvement in the clean room where prosecutors allege deadly fungus contaminated drugs were being produced.
He said Evanosky told him that he had nothing to do with the tainted drugs and his only work was processing controlled substances for use in intravenous medications and feeding tubes.
He said Evanosky did express concern about the increasing volume of orders being processed at the Framingham, Mass. facility and that he had recently observed other clean room workers discarding stock solutions.
The agent said it was supervising pharmacist Glenn Chin who oversaw some NECC drugs being shipped out to health care providers before they could be tested for sterility and potency.
"He said it was being carried out by Chin" Sliney said, adding that Evanosky told him the practice of shipping drugs before testing testing had become more prevalent in recent months. Chin was convicted of racketeering and mail fraud is now serving an eight0year prison sentence.
The interview came a little over a month after NECC was shutdown following the public disclosure of the growing public health care crisis caused by fungal contamination of thousands of vials of a steroid, methylprednisolone acetate, injected in the spines and joints of unsuspecting patients in 20 states.
Sliney said that while Evanosky denied any involvement in shipping drugs before testing a coworker, Sharon Carter, would have known of the practice. Like Evanosky, Carter is now on trial.
The FBI agent said Evanosky denied any knowledge of labels being changed on drugs to disguise expiration dates, but he was aware that drugs from a sister company had been processed at NECC. Sliney said Evanosky told him that he had never seen evidence of mold in the cleaning room and that he was "shocked" when he first heard news accounts about mold and fungus being present in the room where he worked.
As for the doctored cleaning logs, Sliney said Evanosky told him that at the end of each month he and other clean room workers were instructed to fill in the cleaning logs as if they had been doing so on a daily basis. He said Evanosky acknowledged that he might have filled in the form indicating he mopped the clean room on a day when he may not have actually done it.
In other testimony, Sliney detailed NECC records he and other agents collected and a summary sheet he compiled listing drugs shipped by NECC before tests were performed. He also detailed dozens of instances in which drugs were shipped out even though tests showed key ingredients were below or above the prescribed amount.
On cross examination, Mark Pearlstein, Evanosky's lawyer, pointed out that some of the defendants hadn't even gone to work at NECC when many of the defective drugs were shipped.
Asked if any patients were actually harmed by the under-powered or over-powered NECC drugs, Sliney said he didn't know. Defense lawyers also challenged testimony from two employees of the Oklahoma testing firm hired by NECC to test its drugs for sterility and potency.
Tommy Means of Analytical Research Laboratories, who testified as a prosecution witness, acknowledged his company had been cited in a federal inspection for some deficiencies in late 2012. He said the inspectors cited "some things we could improve upon."
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