Pharmacist in NECC Probe Seeks Probation

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

A pharmacist, who pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about his relationship with a now defunct drug company, is asking a federal judge not to give him a jail sentence but one year of probation and a $100 special assessment.
In an 11-page filing in U.S. District Court in Boston, Mass. the lawyer for Claudio Pontoriero said his client was guilty of only a one time lapse of judgment when he lied to federal agents about the payments he received from Ameridose, a now shuttered Westborough pharmaceutical company that came under scrutiny in the 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak. Pontoriero is scheduled to go before U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin for sentencing Thursday.
Pontoriero, a pharmacy technician, entered a guilty plea to charges that he lied to federal agents about $355,000 in payments he received from Ameridose between 2006 and 2012. The payments were made in $5,000 monthly installments. He told agents that the payments were in return for consulting work related to the company's web site.
In fact, prosecutors charged, Pontoriero was being paid in return for his influence at Massachusetts General Hospital in winning business for Ameridose and a sister company, the New England Compounding Center. NECC has been named as the cause of the 2012 outbreak which sickened nearly 800 patients, killing more than 100 of them.
Pontoriero was a pharmacy buyer at Mass General. He is still a registered technician and is employed at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital.
In the filing this week, Pontotiero's lawyer, Joshua Ruby, wrote that his client was a dedicated husband who realized the seriousness of the charges filed against him. He noted federal prosecutors also agreed that Pontoriero should not be imprisoned.
Noting that two other NECC defendants, Douglas and Carla Conigliaro, were given only probation as a sentence after their guilty pleas, Ruby wrote that it would be a "grave injustice" for Pontoriero to be given a harsher sentence. He noted that the Conigliaros earned profits from NECC and were "personally involved in events leading up to the 2012 meningitis outbreak."
Attached to the filing were 23-pages of letters from supporters urging leniency for Pontoriero. Among those were Carlo DeMaria, the mayor of Everett.
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