Framingham pharmacist guilty in fatal tainted-drug case
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The former home of New England Compounding Center on Waverly Street in Framingham.
Barry Cadden, a co-owner and head pharmacist of a Framingham company connected to a fungal meningitis outbreak, was convicted Wednesday of fraud and racketeering, but was not found guilty of murder.
The 2012 outbreak went nationwide, killing 64 people in nine states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 700 were diagnosed with a fungal injection after they received a drug manufactured by the Framingham company, New England Compounding Center.
"This case was a national tragedy," Acting U.S. Attorney William Weinreb told reporters after the conviction.
Cadden, a 50-year-old of Wrentham, directed and authorized the shipments of the drug, methylprednisolone acetate, or MPA, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston. He authorized the shipment nationwide before test results were returned that could confirm that the drugs were sterile, according to prosecutors, and the compounding center never notified customers that the drug was found to not be sterile.
The contaminated MPA was also used with expired ingredients, and some were made by an unlicensed pharmacy technician. Cadden also "repeatedly took steps to shield NECC's operations from regulatory oversight by the FDA," according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, by claiming to be a pharmacy dispensing drugs to valid, patient-specific prescriptions. The center, however, used fictional celebrity names on prescription forms.
Cadden is scheduled to be sentenced on June 21. His charges include racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, mail fraud and introduction of mis-branded drugs into interstate commerce with the intent to defraud and mislead.
He faces up to 20 years in prison on each of the fraud and racketeering charges.
Cadden and NECC’s supervisory pharmacist, Glenn Chin, were indicted on second-degree murder in 2014, when only 25 had been killed. Prosecutors said at the time that the two "acted with extreme indifference to human life."
"It is alleged that Cadden and Chin were aware that doctors would inject MPA into their patients’ bodies, and that if the MPA was not in fact sterile, it could kill them," the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
Chin's case is scheduled to go to trial next month.
A total of 14 at the center were indicted, with the remainder on more minor charges of racketeering, mail fraud and violations of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.
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