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Unlicensed Pharmacy Tech’s Guilty Plea in Meningitis Outbreak
BOSTON – A former employee of the New England Compounding Center (NECC) in Framingham, Massachusetts, has pleaded guilty to working as an unlicensed pharmacy technician at the compounding pharmacy.
Scott M. Connolly, 46, of East Greenwich, R.I., pleaded guilty to 10 counts of mail fraud. U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns scheduled sentencing for Dec. 19, 2018.
Connolly was a licensed pharmacy technician from September 2007 to January 2009, when he voluntarily surrendered his license in connection with a disciplinary action against him. Under Massachusetts regulations, pharmacy technicians filling drug orders are required to be licensed. Nevertheless, Connolly was hired at NECC and worked as a pharmacy technician from 2010 through October 2012.
Connolly was assigned to Clean Room 2 making cardioplegia solutions that are used to stop patients’ hearts during heart surgeries. For more than two years, Connolly produced thousands of cardioplegia solutions that were sent to customers throughout the country.
Connolly’s unlicensed status was known to his supervising pharmacists, Barry Cadden, Glenn Chin, and others. To mask his presence from regulators, Connolly used Cadden’s username and password to log into the computerized pump so that his name would not appear on any paperwork generated when he filled the cardioplegia orders.
The NECC criminal case arose from the nationwide outbreak of fungal meningitis that was traced back to contaminated vials of preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate (MPA) manufactured by NECC. The outbreak was the largest public health crisis caused by a pharmaceutical product.
Connolly is cooperating with the government and is expected to testify during the October 2018 trial of the remaining NECC defendants. The charge of mail fraud provides for a sentence of no greater than 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000.
Key Facts
- State: Massachusetts
- Category: Drug Trafficking|Fraud & Financial Crimes|Violent Crime
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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