Former Mayo Clinic radiology technician Steven Beumel, 48, of Orange Park has been indicted by a federal grand jury on five counts of tampering with a consumer product resulting in death or serious bodily injury and five counts of obtaining a controlled substance by fraud after five patients contracted hepatitis C, one dying.
If convicted on all counts, Beumel, infected with hepatitis C, faces a maximum penalty of life in prison.
According to the indictment, Beumel was a radiology technician at Memorial Hospital Jacksonville from mid-1992 through October 2004. He also did the same job at Mayo Clinic from October 2004 through August. The indictment says he injected himself with patients' painkillers and refilled the empty syringes with saline, creating a way to spread the disease even though he put new needles on the syringes to be given to patients.
Mayo fired him. The police arrest report said Beumel acknowledged to detectives that he was addicted to Fentanyl and had taken drugs from his work starting in 2006. But his attorney did say in August that Beumel had no idea he had hepatitis.
In a statement released Tuesday afternoon by Mayo, the hospital said it continues to extend its deepest condolences to family and friends of those killed or injured by the hepatitis C transmission.
Testing done on 3,500 patients found two more testing positive for hepatitis C that “may be related to the former employee’s action,” according to the statement. Those patients are receiving follow-up care, it stated. As for security changes to control narcotics, Mayo said they have been strengthened and the hospital's drug-screening panel for potential new hires has been expanded.
This case was investigated by the FBI, Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, Food and Drug Administration and Florida Department of Financial Services.
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