Original subtitles

In this episode of American Greed, a mysterious plague is sweeping the

I've got this strange headache, like a headache I've never had before.

Hundreds of people are falling victim to a devastating illness.

It felt like my head was going to explode.

I was begging for death. I wanted to die. The pain was relentless.

And 100 people will die.

He was gone.

Just gone.

A man who 18 days ago had been loving life

to nothing.

The one thing all the victims share is that they got medicine from this man,

Barry Catton.

He pockets $3 million in under a year.

manufacturing drugs in a clean room that is far from clean.

They had bacteria growing in the room. They had mold growing in the room.

And what do his victims believe stopped Cadden from cleaning up his act?

Greed.

He was making so much money.

At the University of Rhode Island, Barry Catt, as his yearbook photo shows,

graduates in 1990.

He goes on to the school's College of Pharmacy.

On becoming a pharmacist, he takes an oath, promising to make the welfare of

humanity and relief of suffering his primary concern.

Pharmacists play a really...

important role in our society, they are truly the gatekeepers between our

nation's drug supply and patients.

And with that promise to put patients first, in 1998, Cadden starts a

compounding pharmacy called New England Compounding Center, NECC.

A compounding pharmacy doesn't just sell drugs, it makes them for patients who

need customized medicine.

So, for example, if you had a child who was allergic to a particular ingredient

in a drug, a compounding pharmacy could make that drug without that ingredient

in it.

With NECC, Catton decides to go big and sell his drugs across the country to

hospitals and clinics.

As part of that effort...

He has his sales meetings videotaped so his team can listen to his instructions

on the road.

This video of one meeting shows how Cadden describes what makes any CC

from other compounders. The people, the clean rooms, the testing procedures, our

cleaning procedures, it's all that boring stuff. That's what adds up, and

what produces a quality product.

It was quality, quality, quality.

That was the sales pitch.

But Barry Catton has one problem to get around, regulation.

If NECC sells drugs in bulk, like a manufacturer, the Food and Drug

Administration will oversee his operation.

But if he calls NECC a pharmacy that is filling specific prescriptions, he will

fall under the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts State Board of Pharmacy.

And that is exactly what Barry Catton wants.

They had three inspectors for 1 ,100 pharmacies in the state of

That's it.

They had no experience with clean rooms. They had very little experience with

compounding. And those are the folks that Barry Catton wanted to regulate him

because there was no regulation at all.

This videotape of a sales meeting reveals how Catton views the state

They don't even know what they're looking at. They have no clue. They go

They're like, oh, Barry's place looks great.

Yeah, I got to go.

a coffee and they go out the door. Really, that's what it is like.

But still, to keep NECC looking like a pharmacy, not a manufacturer, he needs

prescriptions.

And so his salespeople ask customers, clinics and hospitals to supply patient

names with their orders.

Barry had an in -house group of and other typists who took the

orders and they typed up prescriptions.

The customers know the names don't matter, and so any names will do.

They use doctor's names, staff names, and a lot of times they use made -up

names. They use celebrity names.

A look in NECC's files shows fake prescriptions created using names

like Donald Trump.

Calvin Klein, L .L. Bean, Filet -O -Fish, Big Baby Jesus.

The need for patient names is a touchy topic, as revealed in this training

when a salesman brings it up in a meeting.

Is it a one -to -one patient names for the bulbar blocks?

Um, that's something for another time. Yeah, let's not, that's...

We can talk about that. That's actually one of the more difficult things we do.

Let's just talk about the products now while we're being recorded.

It sounds like fraud.

But for Barry Catton, it's a business plan.

And that says a lot about Barry Catton.

It says that he's more interested in taking the easy way out without.

or any more oversight than he needs to tolerate, which makes him basically

exactly the wrong kind of person to be in charge of a facility that mixes

drugs that get injected into people.

But his scheme to evade FDA regulation works.

In 2006, after the FDA investigates complaints about the quality of NECC's

medicine, it issues him a warning letter.

And Catton is ready with his defense.

Barry Catton pushes back in terms of jurisdiction, saying we fall under the

Board of Pharmacy, we do not fall under the FDA. And basically saying you don't

have jurisdiction over us because we have these patient -specific

And so Catton continues to grow his business with little scrutiny.

And in 2011, there is a crisis in the country that serves him well.

Healthcare professionals are raising red flags about the supply of our nation's

prescription drugs.

A national drug shortage, and Barry Cadden steps up production to meet a new

demand. He had his staff in the clean room working overtime to make these

that were on shortage, and the business skyrocketed.

But in the short history of NECC, there is what some consider a red flag.

In 2004, NECC is sued by the widow of a man who she claims died when

he received a contaminated steroid injection made by NECC.

NECC settles the case with no admission of wrongdoing for $400 ,000.

What's so important to learn from that experience was that Barry Cannon was on

notice that if you don't do these things correctly, people can die.

Up next on American Greed, NECC unleashes a mystery.

We were in uncharted territory.

It wasn't in the books.

hours outside of Nashville is the small town of Albany, Kentucky.

It's where Eddie Loveless works his entire life as a lawyer and earns a

reputation.

Dad would help anyone who asked. The people knew they could depend on him and

they could trust him.

In 2012, Eddie is a circuit court judge.

I even had some of the criminals who would say to me, I want your dad to be

judge in my case because I know that I'll be treated fairly.

And his family thinks pretty highly of him, too.

He was the best grandfather that our children could possibly have had.

I just can't say enough good things about him.

In the summer of 2012, at age 78...

He is in good health, but goes to a clinic within St. Thomas Hospital in

Nashville to get steroid injections in his spine to relieve pain and

inflammation.

After a shot in August, he has a headache, then numbness in his fingers.

And a few days later, it is clear something is really wrong.

He was sitting there in the kitchen, had a terrible look on his face.

I will forget that.

And he said, my legs don't work.

He said, I've been twice out front to get my paper, and he said, I've fallen.

He is taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.

The doctor there thinks he may have suffered a stroke, but it makes no sense

that he is not recovering.

He's going downhill fast.

My brother's youngest daughter would go in, and she would say, Papa, give me the

thumbs up.

That thumb would go up.

And then Sunday, there was no response. He wouldn't squeeze her

hand. No response at all.

As the loveless family gathers around Eddie, just down the hall in the same

hospital is another mystery.

A 55 -year -old man has been diagnosed with meningitis.

The funny thing about it was when we sent specimens to our laboratory, which

would have revealed the bacteria, there was nothing there. Nothing grew.

And then his doctor, thinking outside the box, sends the specimen to be tested

for fungal disease.

It comes back positive.

And now the doctors know the patient has fungal meningitis, an extremely rare

condition.

We were in uncharted territory.

It wasn't in the books.

His doctors later learn that the patient received a steroid injection at the

same clinic where Eddie Loveless received his injection.

Immediately, the clinic doctors called the owner of the company that made the

steroid they injected, NECC, New England Compounding Center.

NECC, Barry Cannon's initial response is, it's not us.

They say, look, see, here's our test results. They show that the drug that

have, the methylprednisolone acetate preservative -free, it's sterile.

But that sterile test result may not mean much.

The reason?

When it made the drug in August, NECC prepared 12 .5 liters of the steroid.

It only sent out 5 milliliters for sterility testing.

They were supposed to send out 20 samples for every lot. They were sending

one.

And a tiny one at that.

If you have a batch of drugs that has fungi in it, and you're only taking 5

the chances that you're going to capture a sample with the fungus in it is very

limited.

Sending out such a small sample is risky, especially when Katten has been

informed that his process for sterilizing drugs is failing.

According to federal prosecutors,

NECC pharmacists routinely shortchange the time their products are placed in

pressure chamber used to sterilize the drugs. The time should be 20 minutes.

At NECC, they cut it to 15 or less.

But it gets worse.

Because when NECC sends a drug out for sterility testing, it does not always

wait for test results before shipping the drug.

Sterility testing is a time test. It takes 14 days to test a drug.

But NECC wanted to ship drugs. Barry Catton wanted to ship drugs.

On at least three occasions in 2012, Katten is notified that antibiotic

solutions used in surgery NECC has already shipped to hospitals are not

And what does Barry Katten do?

Nothing.

What that means is, Barry Katten didn't have the courage, the...

to call those doctors, to call those hospitals and say, hey, that drug I

you is actually not sterile. Don't use it on your patients.

And just weeks after Katten learns his drugs are testing not sterile, more

patients who received NECC's steroid are falling dangerously ill.

And in Albany, Kentucky,

More than 2 ,000 people show up to pay last respects to Eddie Loveless.

Up next, loved ones are dying and no one seems to know why.

The doctors are confused.

They don't understand.

In September 2012, as NECC becomes a prime suspect in a medical mystery,

the business is thriving.

The company is shipping drugs to hundreds of facilities across the

And for a family -owned business, the revenues are impressive.

$132 million in six years.

Orders were coming in so quickly that...

Staff there just couldn't keep up with them. And the order came in on fax

machines, and he said to his head of sales one night that the sound of the

machine was like his ATM.

Chattin is now living in a 9 ,000 -square -foot house in a town close to

business.

In addition, he owns a waterfront house.

In a pretty seaside community in Rhode Island.

He was doing extremely well.

But while his profits look good, Tatton's emails show evidence of a

risk.

In June 2012, he writes to one of his NECC pharmacists, We can't do what you

currently doing.

This is a disaster waiting to happen. People can die.

He writes about one of the pharmacy technicians.

Ask him how he would feel if his sloppy technique killed some poor slob.

In August, he describes an actual oil leak in the floor of the clean room as

a huge issue.

Actually, in a room that is supposed to be sterile, oil seeping in from an

underground waste site could be considered a huge issue.

They would wipe it away. At one point, they started covering it with plastic

tape.

And then there are the results of what is called environmental monitoring.

Every week, Petri dishes are placed in the clean room with material that would

show the presence of microorganisms in the room.

Increasingly, it showed contamination in that room. They had...

Bacteria growing in the room. They had mold growing in the room. They had mold

and bacteria growing on the gloved fingertips of the technicians and the

pharmacists after they had made a drug.

37 out of 38 weeks in 2012, Barry Cadden had alert or action levels of

mold and bacteria in his clean room.

And with all these warning signs of danger ahead, Tadden never orders

to stop.

The bottom line is that doing things properly takes time and money.

If you're seeing mold in the room, you're supposed to stop production. That

costs money. You're supposed to hire an industrial cleaning company to come in

and help remediate.

That's time and money.

In July, Catton writes an email saying, we had another fungal bloom on June

28th. The day after that bloom, NECC manufactures the pain steroid

methylprednisolone acetate and then ships it to clinics across the country

injected into the spines of thousands of patients.

One NECC customer is a clinic in Roanoke, Virginia.

where Doug Wingate gets an injection to help with pain.

Doug is 47, a father of two.

Doug was an awesome person.

He worked hard. His number one priority in his life was me, his

children, and his home.

The day after his steroid injection, Doug has a headache.

By the next week, he is in so much pain, Sharon takes him to the ER.

The doctors are confused.

They don't understand.

What they're seeing does not indicate bacterial

or viral meningitis, but they're not sure.

Bewildered. Sharon watches her healthy husband very quickly slip away.

I talked to him, and I talked to him, and there was no response.

He couldn't hear me. He couldn't squeeze my hand.

Twelve days after he received the injection, Doug Wingate dies.

He was gone.

Just gone.

A man who 18 days ago had been

walking, laughing, and loving life

to nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

And what Sharon doesn't know...

is that 400 miles away in Atlanta, Doug's death is tied to what is becoming

national crisis.

Just days after he dies, the CDC opens an investigation into the fungal

meningitis cases in Tennessee.

All of these patients had received steroid injections in the spinal area

compounded medication.

And this was concerning to us because compounded medications can sometimes be

contaminated if they're not compounded correctly.

And so on September 25th, it's time for another call to Barry Catton.

We asked him if there were any issues that could have been going on in the

compounding pharmacy to make it a contamination event more likely.

And the answer to those questions were, by and large, no. That there were no

issues with sterility, there were no issues with any mold or any type of

contamination events.

At this point, people are dying and no one understands the reason or how to

treat them.

Time was of the essence. And the last thing you wanted to do was have somebody

lie or minimize or, you know, try to blame somebody else. And that's exactly

what Barry Katten was doing.

Later that same day.

Cadden receives word that a clinic in Indiana has found a gray -colored

object in NECC's steroid.

He responds just before midnight on September 25th with just two words.

Oh, no.

What Barry Cadden realized on the night of Tuesday, September 25th, is that it's

the drug.

That there's something in that drug that is causing people to get sick and die.

He doesn't tell anybody.

But he starts calling clinics, and he starts saying that we are conducting a

recall.

Up next, what other ingredients are in Catton's high -quality medicine?

There was gunk in these vials, and that gunk was being injected into patients.

A week after the CDC takes on the investigation of a fungal meningitis

in Tennessee, investigators want to know if the illness is limited to Tennessee.

So I started cold calling clinics and just calling them and trying to figure

if they were finding patients with the same sort of constellation of symptoms.

Finally, on September 27th, a response comes in from a clinic in North

And they basically were like, yes, we have a case like this.

And so that was when we knew that it was bigger than one clinic.

Potentially much bigger, in fact.

NECC shipped more than 17 ,000 vials of medication from contaminated lots to 20

states.

When I started to realize how big this outbreak was going to be, I felt a

tremendous amount of...

Fear of the unknown.

I felt like I was looking over the edge of a cliff and I couldn't see the

bottom. I didn't see how far this was going to go. I didn't know how bad this

was going to get.

Days later in Massachusetts, the FDA joins the Massachusetts Board of

in an inspection of NECC.

Inside, they find dirty floor mats, a leaky boiler next to the clean room.

Residue on hoods.

They saw a place that was not in control.

They found a place that was very much out of control.

And then an inspector picks up one of the vials of the suspected steroid.

And she sees a black spot.

FDA inspectors testified that when they saw that black spot in that drug, they

knew that they had their answer.

That this is what was causing.

The outbreak.

The nationwide outbreak.

Later, the FDA tests 50 vials of NECC's steroid. All come back

positive with mold or bacteria.

At the CDC, scientists determine that there are 13 different contaminants in

medicine.

It wasn't just the fungus that was really causing this outbreak. There were

other fungi and even other bacteria.

So I like to say there was gunk. I mean, there was gunk in these vials, and that

gunk was being injected into patients.

And now the urgent mission is to notify every single person who is at risk.

That involved thousands of people around the country, literally.

And in some cases, even law enforcement was employed to go knock on doors to let

people know that they had potentially had been exposed.

So this is really a Herculean effort and probably one of the things that ended

up saving the most amount of lives in this outbreak.

One of the people who is notified is Margaret Carmichael, who received her

injection in Michigan.

Almost immediately.

The next day, I got this strange headache, like a headache I've never had

before.

And it was like out of the top of my head.

And my tailbone was the worst searing pain I have ever felt in my

life.

Margaret is a salesperson for a construction business, and she is on the

when she gets a call from the pain clinic.

So I answered it, and she said,

Do you have a headache?

Do you have this? Do you have that?

And I'm like, yes, yes, yes, and yes.

And she said, I need you to get to an ER now.

That was on October 5th.

I went in on October 5th and didn't come back out until May.

Up next, if the disease is bad, just wait for the cure.

I lost 45 pounds.

I lost a lot of my hair, my eyebrows.

I was so sick.

In October 2012, the fungal meningitis outbreak tied to the New England

Compounding Center is a national news story.

Health officials say a deadly meningitis outbreak may be linked to steroid

injections manufactured at a Massachusetts pharmacy.

The number of states affected grows daily, and the death count is rising

quickly. The nationwide meningitis outbreak continues to grow. The CDC says

more people have died, bringing the death toll to 23.

And in Roanoke, Virginia, the Fouts family gets one of the calls notifying

potential NECC victims.

October 4th, received a phone call.

Remember that day pretty vividly.

And, you know, it just shocks you. It takes your breath away.

15 -year -old Zach Fouts received a steroid shot.

And now his parents tell him he is at risk for a rare and dangerous disease.

The first question he asked us is, has anybody died?

You know, we say, yeah.

And, sorry,

I get emotional because bringing all these memories back.

But, you know, 15 -year -old kid, he's not 16 yet.

And he takes it like a young man and just goes on back up to his room.

The incubation period is said to be 35 to 49 days.

If Zach can make it through the next month, he could be one of the lucky ones

whose injection was not contaminated.

Every day was, are you okay?

Do you have a headache? Do you have a temperature?

Going in and checking on him, almost as if I had an infant.

Zach, a strong, healthy teenager, is a star athlete in his high school.

His dream is to one day play Division I college sports.

Three days after his 16th birthday, he has an amazing game.

So I get out there and, you know, I have three interceptions or turn one for a

touchdown in my sophomore year against the defending state champs.

And I remember looking at my wife in the stands and I said, I think we got this

beat.

We got it beat.

But just a few days later, the headaches start.

It felt like something in my head was, my head was going to explode. I mean,

just getting worse. I mean, I'm ripping up pillows.

Zach spent 17 days in the hospital in excruciating pain, unable to

tolerate light or food.

When you're sitting as a mom in a room with your child who is not speaking, not

eating, only throwing up and screaming, it's a pretty lonely, desperate.

feeling for a long time that's right he's gonna die his

friends who visit are worried too seeing your friend you know it's big you

know big athlete just going downhill and there's you know just like a truck with

no brakes just going downhill no one can stop it

Across the country, hospitals are admitting patients with symptoms just

Zach's.

In Indiana, Dawn Elliott, who received five contaminated injections, is in a

world of pain.

I was begging for death. I wanted to die. I wanted to stop.

It just, the pain was relentless.

The hardest hit state is Michigan.

where Margaret Carmichael is undergoing treatment.

That was kind of ground zero.

They basically cleared off two floors in the hospital and were bringing people

in. I mean, then I can't tell you how many times I heard code blue.

I can't tell you how many times I heard that.

You know how scary that is?

Meanwhile, at the CDC, infectious disease doctors have been urgently

figure out a treatment plan.

We knew here we were dealing with an unknown pathogen, that we really didn't

know what it was capable of doing, already had caused some deaths, so we

could cause death, and there were no treatment recommendations for it.

The treatment the CDC comes up with is intense.

Some patients believe it is similar to chemotherapy.

I was so sick.

I lost 45 pounds.

I couldn't eat.

You know, I lost a lot of my hair, my eyebrows.

And then there are the hallucinations.

I was laying in bed and so out of it. I was picking at things in the air,

thinking I was getting clothes off the shelf.

I would vacuum crumbs off the bed.

Imaginary crumbs.

Meanwhile, in Albany, Kentucky, Karen Talbot hears a news story that mentions

the St. Thomas Hospital Clinic.

And I just stood there speechless. And then finally I said, that's where I took

Daddy.

And so Eddie Loveless' family has his body exhumed and an autopsy performed.

Cause of death,

fungal meningitis.

He is now listed as Barry Cadden's first known victim.

We were re -traumatized, repeatedly re -traumatized. You relived it over and

over and over again.

You were glued to the news. You saw stories about individuals who had died,

individuals who were sick. And we had just buried dad.

When Sharon Wingate finally gets a call from the coroner explaining that a

contaminated injection killed Doug, she has a powerful reaction.

Furious.

Absolutely dumbfounded, furious, confused, and

why?

By October 5th, NECC has been shut down.

All of its medications are recalled.

For those who come to understand what happened there, it appears the outbreak

was inevitable.

It was like playing a game of Russian roulette, and they just kept adding

bullets into the chamber.

We're not sterilizing correctly.

There's a bullet. We're not testing correctly.

There's a bullet. We're ignoring the fact that there's mold and bacteria

growing. There's another bullet. And then they put those bullets in the

revolver, they spun the chamber, and they fired.

It was absolutely inevitable.

Up next, Barry Catton faces a bold allegation and a daughter's rage.

My father was murdered.

He was murdered.

As NECC's contaminated steroid continues to claim lives in the U .S., Congress

holds hearings in November 2012 to address the failure of federal and state

regulators to prevent the crisis.

The body count is growing by the day and hundreds, hundreds have fallen ill.

Inexcusable.

The first witness to testify is Joyce Loveless.

The FDA, the NECC.

Whoever is responsible, I want them to know their lack of

attention to their duties cost my husband his life.

She is there to speak for Eddie.

I felt like I owed it to him. There was nothing else I could do for him at that

point. But I could do that. I could speak out and let people know what an

important life.

It may not have been important to them, but it was to us.

Do you swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

I do.

Barry Catton is also called and declines to testify.

Mr. Chairman, on advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer on the

basis of my constitutional rights and privileges, including the Fifth

to the United States Constitution.

But he can't escape the questions for long.

In Boston, federal prosecutors are preparing an indictment.

We didn't want the case to just be a fraud case, because what happened here

so much bigger than a fraud.

Federal prosecutors determine that 793 people in 20 states

are made seriously ill by the tainted medication.

Of those, 100 people die.

And that is why in December 2014, Katten is charged with 97 counts of mail

fraud, racketeering, and other violations.

The indictment includes 25 acts of second -degree murder.

It is essentially acting with a reckless indifference for human life.

That is what the evidence showed to us very clearly, and we wanted the case to

reflect that.

Katten pleads not guilty.

But like many who lost loved ones, Karen Talbot believes the murder charge is

deserved. My father was murdered.

He was murdered.

Sharon, Doug Wingate's widow, is called to testify at Cadden's trial in January

2017.

I wanted to face Barry Cadden.

I wanted Barry Cadden to see me.

I wanted him to see our daughter.

And I wanted him to see the pain that we have lived through

since 2012.

The trial lasts 10 weeks.

Catton is found guilty on 57 fraud and racketeering counts.

But the jury split on the second -degree murder charges, and he is not convicted

on those allegations.

Both Catton and the Department of Justice have filed appeals.

And Catton's sentence?

Nine years in federal prison.

We're on record as asking for what we thought would be a proportional sentence

for Catton, and that was 35 years.

35 years better reflects the sheer amount of human destruction

that these guys caused, led by Catton.

Many of his victims are outraged.

Nine years.

His life's altered for nine years.

Mine, forever.

My children is forever.

And he got nine years.

Devastated.

Both Barry Catton and his attorney do not respond to requests for comment from

American Greed.

In the end, Catton pays $22 million to a victim fund as part of a settlement for

multiple civil claims.

But his victims say the price they pay is much more than financial.

Margaret Carmichael says she loses her entire career and suffers memory loss

constant pain from incurable inflammation on her spine.

It starts in the morning.

It takes about a good hour and a half before I can even get out of bed.

I wake up in an incredible amount of pain.

Incredible amount of pain.

Dawn Elliott has the same story.

I lost my job.

I'm on pain meds the rest of my life.

And I had a surgery not to fix me.

but only to save my life.

Zach Fouts regains his health, and his dream comes true when he is recruited to

play Division I football for Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.

But the ordeal changes him forever.

It still affects me to this day, you know.

With, you know, I have bad, really bad dreams a lot. PTSD, I guess you could

call it.

You know, me dying in different scenarios.

In Albany, Kentucky, there is a courtroom named for the judge who his

says dedicated his life to helping others.

And his children ask, what was Barry Catton dedicated to?

Saving patients or saving money?

My father died as a result of people being focused on profit margin

versus patient care.

And when you cut corners, it costs lives.

Sharon Wingate moves to Holden Beach, North Carolina, where she and Doug had

planned to retire.

Like many victims, She believes there is just one thing behind what happened to

her family.

Greed. He was making so much money.

I can't fathom the mindset other than greed.