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 Claudio Pontoriero, who worked at Massachusetts General Hospital,
was accused in charging documents filed in federal court in Boston
with lying to federal agents about why he took money from a sister
company of New England Compounding Center.
According to the charging documents, Pontoriero said the $5,000 he
received monthly from Ameridose LLC was for consulting services and
not in exchange for his influence in picking the company or NECC as
a drug supplier for the hospital.
He also falsely told agents with the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration's Office of Criminal Investigations in 2015 that he
provided consulting services to Ameridose related to its website,
according to court papers.
In total, Pontoriero received $355,000 from 2006 to 2012 from
Ameridose, which, along with NECC, sold drugs to medical facilities
nationally, including the hospital that employed Pontoriero, the
court papers said.
Court records did not identify the hospital, but Massachusetts
General Hospital confirmed it employed Pontoriero up until April.
The Boston-based hospital said it had been aware of the government's
interest in Pontoriero and was cooperating with authorities.
Pontoriero was charged in a one-count criminal information, a type
of charging document usually used by prosecutors in connection with
plea deals. It was not clear if Pontoriero, 40, had a plea
agreement.
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George Vien, Pontoriero's lawyer, declined to comment.
The case stemmed from an investigation related to Framingham,
Massachusetts-based NECC, which according to authorities, produced
the mold-tainted steroids at the center of the 2012 fungal
meningitis outbreak.
Prosecutors say that 793 people nationwide were sickened after being
injected with the steroids. Of those, 76 people died, prosecutors
said.
Federal juries in 2017 convicted Barry Cadden, NECC's co-founder and
former president, and Glenn Chin, its supervisory pharmacist, on
racketeering and mail-fraud charges but cleared them of
second-degree murder related to 25 patients' deaths.
Cadden, who was also a co-owner of Ameridose, was sentenced in June
2017 to nine years in prison. Chin was sentenced in January to eight
years in prison.
Twelve other people associated with NECC were also charged along
with Chin and Cadden in 2014. Three have pleaded guilty. A trial for
the remaining nine defendants is scheduled for October.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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