Prosecutor: NECC case ‘a story of greed’

A drugmaker prosecutors said saw his order-spewing fax machine as “his own personal ATM” went on trial yesterday for his life, accused of murdering 25 people in seven states with painkillers his company whipped together in a filthy Framingham plant infested with mice, insects and mold.

Barry J. Cadden, 50, of Wrentham, former owner and CEO of the New England Compounding Center, studiously took notes as Assistant U.S. Attorney George Varghese excoriated him before a jury of 10 women and five men.

The prosecutor cast Cadden as a white-collar villain who caused “the largest public health crisis ever by a pharmaceutical drug,” and once shipped urgently needed medication to treat children with cancer, knowing it had been expired for four years.

“Barry Cadden put profits over patients. It’s a story of greed, it’s a story of cutting corners. From soup to nuts, NECC was a fraud,” said Varghese. Cadden is facing a potential life sentence if convicted. A federal grand jury indicted him on 97 felony charges, including the murders, racketeering, mail fraud and introducing adulterated and misbranded drugs into commerce.

The allegations include that Cadden orchestrated the compilation of a bogus list of prescriptions so that NECC could operate as a pharmacy overseen by the state instead of as a manufacturer controlled by federal regulators.

Among the names investigators found on NECC prescriptions were Tom Brady, Jimmy Kimmel and Filet O’Fish.

Just months before the fungal meningitis outbreak exploded in the fall of 2012, Varghese said Cadden and NECC delivered 300 doses of anesthesia to the Massachusetts Eye and Ear specialty hospital for patients undergoing eye surgery that was 67 percent weaker than it should have been.

“People were going in to get eye surgery and they could feel it,” Varghese said as many in U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns’ packed courtroom squirmed.

Varghese said right before “a national tragedy” hit, NECC shipped 17,600 vials of methylprednisolone acetate contaminated with mold to health facilities in 23 states. Besides mold, investigators found insects and mice at NECC, as well as oil bubbling up from the floorboards.

Defense attorney Bruce Singal scoffed at Varghese’s portrayal of NECC as “a contaminated pit of filth,” countering with security video of workers dutifully scrubbing floors and donning sanitation suits and boots.

“He is not a murderer,” Singal said of Cadden, “and he is not responsible for their deaths.”