NECC RXs Appeal Their Convictions

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

Three former pharmacists for a defunct drug compounding firm are appealing their convictions on racketeering, conspiracy, mail fraud and related charges and will bring their cases later this week before a three judge federal appeals court panel in Boston.
All three were employed by the New England Compounding Center, the company blamed for a 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak that ultimately took the lives of over 100 unsuspecting patients. But Gene Svirskiy, Christopher Leary and Alla Stepanets were not charged with producing the drugs causing the outbreak but their role in producing other drugs that were adulterated, misbranded or prescribed for fictitious patients.
Alla Stepanets is appealing her conviction on multiple charges of introducing misbranded drugs into interstate commerce.
There was no evidence, her lawyer John Cunha argued in a recent brief, that she ever even saw the prescriptions made out for obviously fictitious patients like Filet O Fish. It wasn't her job to check patient names but to check that the correct drugs were being shipped.
"There was insufficient evidence to convict Ms. Stepanets," the brief concludes.
Svirskiy, who was convicted on racketeering, conspiracy and mail fraud charges, is serving a 30 month sentence in federal prison. His lawyer, Jeremy Sternberg, noted in a brief, that the charges against Svirskiy "had nothing to do" with the fungal meningitis outbreak.
And, he wrote, that Svirskiy never even met NECC's clients and therefore, could not have misrepresented to those health care providers the quality of NECC's products.
Svirskiy recently tried to get an early release from prison due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but his effort was rebuffed. He is scheduled to be released from federal prison on Aug. 26 of next year. Paul Kelly, Leary's lawyer, wrote that his client, like the other NECC employees "took cleaning very seriously."
Leary was convicted on charges of mail fraud and introducing misbranded or adulterated drugs into interstate commerce. He was sentenced to eight months of home detention.
Arguing that there was insufficient evidence to convict his client on mail fraud charges, Kelly wrote that Leary had no financial interest in NECC and had no knowledge of what NECC sales representatives were telling the company's client.
The hearing is set to be heard Thursday in the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.
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