(Reuters) – A former Massachusetts pharmaceutical company executive was sentenced to nine years in prison on Monday (June 26) after being convicted of racketeering and fraud charges for his role in a deadly United States meningitis outbreak in 2012.
Barry Cadden, the co-founder and former president of the now-defunct New England Compounding Center, was convicted in March of those crimes by a federal jury in Boston but cleared of the harshest charges he faced, second-degree murder.
Prosecutors had asked US District Judge Richard Stearns in Boston to sentence Cadden, 50, to 35 years in prison, saying he directed the production of drugs in unsanitary and dangerous ways to boost the compounding pharmacy’s profits.
Cadden was one of 14 people tied to Framingham, Massachusetts-based NECC, indicted in 2014 following the outbreak.
He was one of only two people to face second-degree murder charges.