Prosecutor behind meningitis outbreak, opioids cases joins WilmerHale

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON, April 7 (Reuters) - A federal prosecutor in Boston who investigated the compounding pharmacy behind a deadly 2012 U.S. fungal meningitis outbreak and more recently prosecuted consulting firm McKinsey & Co for its role in the opioid epidemic has joined law firm WilmerHale.

Amanda Masselam Strachan is joining the firm's Boston office as a partner after a more than 17-year stint at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Massachusetts, where she pursued major healthcare fraud prosecutions and rose to become the chief of the office's criminal division.

Her move came at a politically sensitive moment for WilmerHale, after Republican U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order restricting the firm's access to the federal government.

While other law firms in Trump's crosshairs have cut deals to avoid such orders, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr chose to sue and on Friday, March 28, convinced a judge to largely block the order's enforcement.

At a going-away event the next Monday at the Boston federal court, Masselam Strachan alluded to that ruling as she told attendees it was "my fervent hope that my next chapter is as meaningful to me as this one has been."

"It will be impossible to match, but I hope that I find meaning," Masselam Strachan said. "Friday was a day that really gave me hope that I will find that meaning at Wilmer and that I'll get to stand up and fight for things that I believe in, just as I have here."

Masselam Strachan, who worked at Wilmer before becoming federal prosecutor in 2007, will handle white collar criminal and civil investigations at the firm with a focus on healthcare fraud enforcement.

As the criminal division's chief, she supervised financial and cyber fraud investigations as well as health care fraud enforcement, which she said was driven by a desire to ensure patients receive crucial treatments without falling victim to corporate fraud.

"We want to make patient care safer, but we also want to make sure that these companies are able to continue, to the extent possible, to do what they do," Masselam Strachan said.

She helped lead the probe of Massachusetts-based New England Compounding Center, whose mold-tainted drugs caused a nationwide fungal meningitis outbreak that sickened about 800 patients, more than 100 of whom died.

Fourteen people associated with NECC were indicted, culminating in 13 convictions, most of which through four trials Masselam Strachan handled.

Those tried included former NECC president Barry Cadden, who was sentenced to 14-1/2 years in prison after being convicted of racketeering and fraud charges in 2017. She tried that case alongside George Varghese, who joined WilmerHale in 2019.

She then turned her attention to the opioid epidemic, helping secure in 2019 a corporate resolution with fentanyl spray maker Insys Therapeutics and a $650 million agreement in December with McKinsey resolving charges over advice it provided Purdue Pharma on how to "turbocharge" sales of OxyContin.

Read more:

Consulting firm McKinsey to pay $650 million to resolve US opioid charges

Unit of drugmaker Insys pleads guilty to U.S. opioid bribe scheme

Pharmacy exec in deadly U.S. meningitis outbreak gets stiffer, 14-1/2 year prison term