On Wednesday, March 10, Thomas Butler, the Texas Tech University researcher convicted last December of fraud and improperly shipping plague samples, is scheduled to be sentenced in a US District Court in Lubbock, Texas.
Found guilty on 47 counts, Butler, a plague expert, faces sentences that when added together, total 315 years, and he may be ordered to pay more than $100,000 (US) in fines. "[He] took extraordinary steps to conceal contracts from his employer, pocketed the proceeds from those contracts into his bank account... and concealed it," says prosecutor Robert Webster, an assistant US attorney in Dallas. "Beyond a reasonable doubt, the criminal conduct."
Webster says Butler took about $750,000 in payments from drug companies over more than a decade, money that should have gone to Texas Tech instead. The government formally charged him with illegally receiving $356,675 since 1998, and the jury convicted him of stealing $332,175 of ...
