Federal authorities made the first arrest in the case of the New England Compounding Center, a Massachusetts-based drug maker whose tainted steroid pain medication killed dozens of people across the country in 2012.
The authorities said they arrested Glenn Adam Chin, 46, the head pharmacist at the company, at Logan International Airport in Boston as he was about to board a flight to Hong Kong, according to Carmen M. Ortiz, a United States attorney.
Investigators said they moved quickly after they learned that Mr. Chin was planning to leave the country on Thursday morning.
A spokeswoman said she did not know whether Mr. Chin was leaving because of potential criminal charges. He was charged with one count of mail fraud, according to the United States attorney’s office.
Paul Shaw, the lawyer representing Mr. Chin, said the arrest in the airport was an attempt on the part of the United States attorney’s office to generate publicity for the case. He said Mr. Chin had been under investigation for two years but had never been formally told he was a target. He said he was on his way to a family wedding in Hong Kong with his wife, two children and mother-in-law.
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Glenn Adam Chin, left, with his lawyer, Paul Shaw, on Thursday. Mr. Shaw denounced the public nature of Mr. Chin’s arrest.Credit...Steven Senne/Associated Press
“The government was well aware of Mr. Chin’s plans,” he said. “This is just a press ploy by the U.S. attorney’s office, and, to me, it’s outrageous.”
The arrest signals the beginning of public criminal proceedings against the New England Compounding Center, whose contaminated drugs led to the deaths from fungal meningitis of 64 people in the fall of 2012. More than 680 people were sickened. The contamination caused an uproar and prompted new legislation governing compounding pharmacies, such as the New England Compounding Center that originally made specialized formulations of drugs for patients with particular needs. Over the years, such companies grew into mass manufacturers distributing medicine all over the country, virtually unregulated by the federal government.
The pharmacy, now closed, was owned by the Conigliaro family of Massachusetts, which started its business empire with a recycling company created by one brother in 1990. The family later branched into pharmaceuticals, riding changes in the health care landscape to become a major supplier of tailor-made drugs to hospitals, clinics and doctor’s offices across the nation. It was not clear on Thursday whether the owners would also be criminally charged. A spokeswoman for the United States attorney’s office said the investigation was continuing.
The charges against Mr. Chin, described in a criminal complaint provided by the United States attorney’s office, accuse him of fraudulently labeling drugs as injectable and shipping them to a pain clinic in Michigan, where 217 patients eventually contracted fungal meningitis and 15 died.
In the complaint, investigators said Mr. Chin had overseen numerous unsafe practices, including improper sterilization and improper testing of supposedly sterile medication.
“To conceal these unsafe practices, Chin instructed pharmacy technicians to mislabel medication to indicate it was properly sterilized and tested,” the complaint said. Mr. Shaw called the charge “absolute nonsense.”
Mr. Chin appeared in court on Thursday for an initial hearing. The maximum sentence is 20 years in prison, the United States attorney’s office said, followed by three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine.
The authorities said they arrested Glenn Adam Chin, 46, the head pharmacist at the company, at Logan International Airport in Boston as he was about to board a flight to Hong Kong, according to Carmen M. Ortiz, a United States attorney.
Investigators said they moved quickly after they learned that Mr. Chin was planning to leave the country on Thursday morning.
A spokeswoman said she did not know whether Mr. Chin was leaving because of potential criminal charges. He was charged with one count of mail fraud, according to the United States attorney’s office.
Paul Shaw, the lawyer representing Mr. Chin, said the arrest in the airport was an attempt on the part of the United States attorney’s office to generate publicity for the case. He said Mr. Chin had been under investigation for two years but had never been formally told he was a target. He said he was on his way to a family wedding in Hong Kong with his wife, two children and mother-in-law.
Image
Glenn Adam Chin, left, with his lawyer, Paul Shaw, on Thursday. Mr. Shaw denounced the public nature of Mr. Chin’s arrest.Credit...Steven Senne/Associated Press
“The government was well aware of Mr. Chin’s plans,” he said. “This is just a press ploy by the U.S. attorney’s office, and, to me, it’s outrageous.”
The arrest signals the beginning of public criminal proceedings against the New England Compounding Center, whose contaminated drugs led to the deaths from fungal meningitis of 64 people in the fall of 2012. More than 680 people were sickened. The contamination caused an uproar and prompted new legislation governing compounding pharmacies, such as the New England Compounding Center that originally made specialized formulations of drugs for patients with particular needs. Over the years, such companies grew into mass manufacturers distributing medicine all over the country, virtually unregulated by the federal government.
The pharmacy, now closed, was owned by the Conigliaro family of Massachusetts, which started its business empire with a recycling company created by one brother in 1990. The family later branched into pharmaceuticals, riding changes in the health care landscape to become a major supplier of tailor-made drugs to hospitals, clinics and doctor’s offices across the nation. It was not clear on Thursday whether the owners would also be criminally charged. A spokeswoman for the United States attorney’s office said the investigation was continuing.
The charges against Mr. Chin, described in a criminal complaint provided by the United States attorney’s office, accuse him of fraudulently labeling drugs as injectable and shipping them to a pain clinic in Michigan, where 217 patients eventually contracted fungal meningitis and 15 died.
In the complaint, investigators said Mr. Chin had overseen numerous unsafe practices, including improper sterilization and improper testing of supposedly sterile medication.
“To conceal these unsafe practices, Chin instructed pharmacy technicians to mislabel medication to indicate it was properly sterilized and tested,” the complaint said. Mr. Shaw called the charge “absolute nonsense.”
Mr. Chin appeared in court on Thursday for an initial hearing. The maximum sentence is 20 years in prison, the United States attorney’s office said, followed by three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine.
