NECC Supervising Pharmacist Arrested After Attempting to Leave Country

Written by Paige McAtee (Patch Staff)

New England Compounding Center’s supervising pharmacist was arrested after he attempted to board a plane to Hong Kong from Boston’s Logan International Airport Thursday morning.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office arrested Glenn Adam Chin, 46, of Canton, in connection to an ongoing criminal investigation of NECC that caused a widespread outbreak of fungal meningitis.

He was charged in U.S. District Court with one count of mail fraud and will meet before Chief Magistrate Judge Boal later today.

Chin was allegedly involved in compounding the contaminated drug that caused 751 patients across the country to be diagnosed with a fungal infection, of which 64 died, the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch reported.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch have been holding a continuous investigation of NECC since fall 2012, when the outbreak began. NECC was based in Framingham until it closed.

Read Patch’s story on the investigation.

Chin was charged with a criminal complaint in participating in the scheme to ship and fraudulently label one lot of MPA as sterile and fit for human use to NECC’s customer, Michigan Pain Specialists, which injected its patients with the preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate (MPA).

There were 217 patients at Michigan Pain Specialists who contracted fungal meningitis, of which 15 died, the affidavit reported.

Read Patch’s story on the NECC’s customer list released by the FDA.

Victims of NECC can email U.S. Attorney’s Office victim assistance message line or call at 888-221-6023.