Federal jury indicts NECC pharmacist

A federal grand jury in Massachusetts on Tuesday indicted the pharmacist in charge of sterility at the New England Compounding Center.

The indictment follows last week’s arrest of Glenn A. Chin on a charge of one count of mail fraud. There were no additional charges in the indictment. Chin’s arraignment is set for 10 a.m. Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts.

The compounding pharmacy where Chin worked has been identified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as the source of tainted steroids that caused the 2012 outbreak of fungal meningitis.

The indictment accuses Chin of defrauding the customers of New England Compounding Center by failing to properly maintain cleanliness, instructing personnel to fraudulently complete cleaning logs, improperly sterilizing and testing preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate, and directing personnel to label vials of the medicine as “injectable.” The vials were then shipped by interstate carriers to customers of the compounding pharmacy.

Tennessee was one of the hardest-hit states in the 2012 outbreak that sickened 751 people nationwide with 64 deaths.