Business, owner charged with making, selling adulterated supplements

MIDDLETOWN — Various agencies announced Friday that a Middletown business and its owner were charged with making and selling adulterated dietary supplements.

According to Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham 75yearold Robert J. Trigo, of Middleotwn, and his business, NatureMost of New England, were charged in a federal court indictment with manufacturing and selling these adulterated dietary supplements.

The indictment was returned Sept. 6 and Trigo surrendered to law enforcement Friday morning. He appeared in New Haven federal court on Friday and was released on a $250,000 bond.

The indictment alleges that Trigo owns NatureMost of New England, which manufactures viamins and dietary supplements that are sold and distributed to wholesalers, distributors, retailers and individual consumers throughout the U.S. and in several foreign countries.

Years ago, on Dec. 4, 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration sent representatives to meet with Trigo to talk about NatureMost’s violations of “current good manufacturing practice regulations,” the indictment alleges. Durham said Trigo told the FDA his business had stopped production and distribution of all products as of that date and promised to meet with the FDA before he resumed operations.

Trigo never contacted the FDA to resume operations and, in 2017, he and his company fraudulently sold adulterated dietary supplements that weren’t “prepared, packed or held in accordance with current good manufacturing practice regulations,” the indictment alleges.

The indictment charged Trigo and NatureMost with three counts of introducing adulterated dietary supplements into interstate commerce.

If convicted of the charges, Trigo faces a maximum of three years in prison and a fine up to $250,000 on each count. NatureMost faces a fine of up to $500,000 on each count.

EAST HARTFORD — U.S. Rep. John B. Larson, D1st District, joked Friday about his “tunnel vision.” For three years, he has been promoting a multibillion dollar concept for burying the I84/91 interchange in Hartford. And that, according to a colleague, makes him unique in Congress.

Larson, 71, a congressman for 20 years, is not simply seeking federal funding. He is working outside the state Department of Transportation on his own infrastructure vision, one that would compete with plans being developed by the administration of Gov. Ned Lamont.

“John is uniquely persistent and vocal and visionary,” said U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, DOregon, the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Asked if he could name another colleague playing the role of infrastructure auteur, he simply replied, “No.”

Larson and DeFazio held a press conference Friday in Great River Park to promote Larson’s tunnel, an event organized around three political and charitable fundraising events. Larson held a nearly identical news conference at the park in 2017 with DeFazio’s predecessor.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, DCalif., arrived at midday for a luncheon fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and planned to stay for Larson’s annual charitable party: A bocce tournament at a Knights of Columbus hall in the congressman’s hometown of East Hartford, where locals mingle with Connecticut and national pols.

DeFazio’s reelection campaign was the beneficiary of a breakfast fundraiser geared to a construction trade group in Connecticut that is always happy to support whomever is chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

“For us, the chairman of T&I is the most important member of Congress,” said Don Shubert, the president of the Connecticut Construction Industries Association.

Notably absent from the news conference at Great River Park was any representative of the Lamont administration, which has told Larson that his tunnel idea will not be an element of a 10year transportation plan in development by the governor. Lamont’s predecessor, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, also never endorsed the idea.

No one has a precise cost of Larson’s plan, since it has been sketched out only in schematics, not detailed drawings. But the congressman uses a ballpark figure of $10 billion, which could be as much as half of what Lamont intends to propose to spend on a statewide plan.

Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, who attended the press conference, said major elements of Larson’s are attractive, namely correcting what he called “those two great planning sins of the last century” — cutting Hartford in half with I84 and separating the downtown from the Connecticut River with I91.

DeFazio said the interstate highway system is the neglected legacy of the postwar Eisenhower administration.

“And in some places like here we made big mistakes when we built the interstate system,” DeFazio said. “We have to rebuild it, and when we rebuild it, we need to correct the mistakes of the past and build in resiliences for the future with the extreme weather events that are coming with climate change.”

Larson said the I84/91 reconstruction should be a design/build project — a process in which his idea would be one of many to be evaluated.

“If we go with design/ build, what they are going to have to do is take all the proposals and say, ‘OK, does this work out?’ And that’s a job for the engineers, not me. My job is to get the money and get enough money so that if we’ve got the green light, we go with what’s going to deliver the biggest bang for us,” Larson said. “And I still think that’s tunneling.”

Riverfront Recapture has reconnected the city to the river with decks over the highway, but Larson’s plan is to place I91 in a tunnel, making way for a new pedestrian boulevard.

It also would place I84 in a tunnel in a new route south of downtown, opening acres of developable property. The highway currently passes through Hartford on a viaduct, which needs replacement, and below grade in a “canyon’ that separates the downtown from the North End.

One of the reasons for the administration’s lack of enthusiasm is cost.

States typically have to contribute at least 20 percent to federally funded infrastructure projects. Even if Larson, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, can work with DeFazio to make the tunnel project a national infrastructure priority, Connecticut could have to pay $2 billion or more.

“I understand everybody’s skepticism, but how do I ask for money to repeat the mistakes of the last 50 years?” Larson said.

Lamont and Larson are not exactly at odds. The Democratic governor and congressman are allies, and Larson invited Lamont to a cocktail party in Hartford, where the governor mingled Thursday night with DeFazio and other members of Congress in town for Larson’s bocce tournament.

In an emailed statement, the governor’s communications director, Max Reiss, downplayed the differences in the transportation priorities of Lamont and Larson.

“The administration is incredibly thankful to have a partner in Washington like Rep. John Larson . ... The administration will continue to work with the Congressman and other federal partners on how the state can help with this vision with assistance from the Federal Government,” Reiss said.