Thomas Farina, Former Pharmaceutical Company District Manager, Charged With Obstruction ...( BOSTON March 4 -- A Fairport New...),Health

BOSTON, March 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A Fairport, New York man was charged today in federal court with obstruction of justice.

United States Attorney Michael J. Sullivan; Warren T. Bamford, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New England; Joseph C. Moraski, Special Agent in Charge of the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General; Keith A. Johnston, Resident Agent in Charge of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service; Mark Dragonetti, Resident Agent in Charge of the Criminal Investigative Service of the Food and Drug Administration; Jeffrey Hughes, Special Agent in Charge of the Veterans Administration Office of Inspector General and Randy Miskanci, Postal Inspector in Charge of the United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General announced today that THOMAS FARINA, age 41, of Fairport, New York, was charged in a four count indictment with obstruction of justice.

The indictment alleges that in the summer of 2004, FARINA, then a manager for a pharmaceutical company, altered and deleted documents from his own computer and directed sales representatives under his management to alter or delete from their computers documents that reflected the off-label promotion of a drug, at a time when they knew that their employer, was under investigation for promoting that drug for unapproved uses, and at a time when they had been specifically instructed to preserve all such documents relating to the promotion of that drug. The indictment specifically alleges as follows,

(1) Prior to the summer of 2004, FARINA had directed sales representatives to promote a drug for uses and at dosages that had specifically been denied approval by the Food and Drug Administration. The grounds for the FDA's non-approval had included safety concerns about the drug's use in those contexts and at the higher dosages.

(2) In early 2004, the pharmaceutical company and FARINA and these sales repr
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