A former Mayo Clinic radiology technician (RT) has been indicted in Florida for tampering with syringes, which resulted in a patient death, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Middle District of Florida.
U.S. Attorney Robert O'Neill announced that Steven Beumel of Orange Park has been charged with 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. If convicted on all counts, Beumel faces a maximum penalty of life in federal prison.
Beumel was a radiology technician at Memorial Hospital in Hollywood, FL, from May 1992 to October 2004; he also worked as a radiology technician at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville between October 2004 and August 2010. The indictment alleges that, before patients' procedures, Beumel took syringes of fentanyl and replaced them with used syringes contaminated with his own hepatitis C virus -- and that five different patients contracted hepatitis C from him, with one patient dying as a result.
The case was investigated by the FBI, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Florida Department of Financial Services, and the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Homicide Unit. It will be prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Talbot.
