A Berkley nurse was sentenced in federal court in Boston for tampering with fentanyl intended for patients at a hospital’s post-surgery recovery unit and an outpatient vascular surgery center. Hugo Vieira, 42, was sentenced to five years of probation, with the first year to be served in home detention. Vieira was also ordered to pay a fine of $20,000. The government recommended a sentence of 38 months in prison and three years of supervised release. In May 2022, Vieira pleaded guilty to one count of tampering with a consumer product. From 2017 to 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 replaced the diverted fentanyl with saline. When his conduct was discovered, law enforcement identified 60 tampered vials at the vascular surgery center and two vials at the hospital post-surgery recovery unit. Those vials contained only 1.3–7% of the declared concentration of fentanyl citrate.
