A Berkley nurse was charged and agreed to plead guilty in federal court in Boston to tampering with fentanyl intended for patients at a hospital’s post-surgery recovery unit and an outpatient vascular surgery center. Hugo Vieira, 41, was charged and has agreed to plead guilty to one count of tampering with a consumer product. According to the charging documents, from December 2018 through January 2019, while working at a Massachusetts hospital and an outpatient vascular surgery center, Vieira removed fentanyl from vials meant for patients who were undergoing surgery or recovering from surgery. To conceal his conduct, Vieira allegedly replaced the diverted fentanyl with saline. Sixty tampered vials were identified at the vascular surgery center and two vials at the hospital post-surgery recovery unit. As a result, each of those vials contained less than 1.3–7% of the declared concentration of fentanyl citrate.
