Meningitis outbreak: 5 convicted after two-month racketeering, mail fraud trial

BOSTON – A federal jury Thursday convicted five defendants on racketeering and mail fraud charges stemming from the probe of a deadly fungal meningitis outbreak caused by contaminated drugs shipped from the company where they all worked.

The jury's decision came during its seventh day of deliberation in a trial that began just shy of two months ago. U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns set March dates for sentencing.

One defendant, Joseph Evanosky, was cleared of all charges. His attorney Mark Pearlstein said his client was "an innocent man who should never have been charged."

Gene Svirskiy, who worked in the clean room where sterile drugs were prepared, was convicted on racketeering and conspiracy charges.

NECC vice president and part-owner Gregory Conigliaro was convicted on the charge of conspiring to defraud the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by representing NECC as a small family-owned business, thus avoiding stricter federal regulation.

The other defendants were cleared of racketeering charges but convicted on mail fraud and violations of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Christopher Leary was cleared of rackteering but convicted on seven other counts.

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All of the defendants were employees of the New England Compounding Center, a now defunct drug compounding firm located in Framingham Mass. NECC shipped thousands of vials of a spinal steroid to health providers across the country.

The steroids were heavily contaminated with fungus and sickened nearly 800 patients in 20 states. At least 76 of them died.

The defendants convicted Thursday were not involved in producing the deadly steroid known as methylprednisolone acetate, but other drugs, many of which prosecutors charged were contaminated, produced under unsanitary conditions, produced with expired chemicals or compounded by an unregistered pharmacy technician.

The drugs at issue in the trial were shipped to health facilities from California to Florida and included cardioplegia, a drug used to stop the heart during open heart surgery, and an eye block use to numb and still the eye during cataract and other eye surgery. NECC shipped methotrexate, a drug used in cancer treatment, even though it had expired five years earlier.

The cardioplegia was compounded by co-defendant Scott Connolly, who had already entered a guilty plea to 10 counts of mail fraud. He worked at NECC as a pharmacy technician despite having surrendered his registration in the midst of an unrelated state pharmacy board investigation.

Connolly testified for the prosecution during the trial as did his brother Joseph, who also worked as a pharmacy technician at NECC.

The eye block was sent to the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, where it failed to numb the eyes of patients undergoing surgical procedures. Evidence introduced during the trial showed it contained only a fraction of the required lidocaine.

Barry Cadden, NECC's president and part-owner, along with Supervisory Pharmacist Glenn Chin were convicted of racketeering and mail fraud charges in separate trials. Both are now serving sentences at separate federal prisons in Pennsylvania.

Two other defendants, Kathy Chin and Michelle Thomas, are scheduled to go on trial March 25, 2019.

The others indicted in late 2014 include Douglas Conigliaro and his wife Carla, who both pleaded guilty to vastly reduced charges. Robert Ronzio, NECC's sales chief, has pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge and awaits sentencing. He testified for the prosecution in the current and prior NECC trials.