Man charged in tampering

A sharp-eyed nurse is being credited with helping investigators apprehend a 28-year-old man accused of tampering with a box of Target cold medicine.

James C. Ayers of Snohomish is charged with acting with reckless disregard for others and putting them at risk of bodily injury or death by slipping a different medicine into a box he purchased and then returned to the store.

The case against Ayers, unsealed in Seattle U.S. District Court yesterday, also disclosed that Target failed to follow its own corporate policy by allowing the box to be resold.

The registered nurse, identified in court papers only as "KK," purchased the box Ayers had returned. She bought the Target Brand Cold and Allergy medicine last May from a Target store in Everett. Although the capsules were in unopened blister packs, she noticed they actually were tetracycline, a prescription antibiotic to which she has had a lifelong allergic reaction and which can be dangerous for others.

KK contacted the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), sparking an investigation that resulted in the consumer-product-tampering charges against Ayers. The government alleges that Ayers had opened and then reglued one end of the box.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Karyn Johnson credited the nurse with being "very sharp" and said she "did the right thing."

Ayers faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted. In court yesterday, Johnson said the government will seek to hold Ayers without bail.

The motive for the tampering is unclear, but Johnson said it's possible Ayers wanted the $5.35 Target gave him for returning the cold medicine.

In a short statement, Target said its policy at the time of the tampering was "to not allow products with a broken factory seal to be resold to guests."

Ayers had purchased the over-the-counter cold medicine at a Target store in Everett on May 11, the government alleged, and returned the box to the Northgate Target store the following day.

Investigators believe he got the tetracycline from his father, who obtained the drug in Italy in 2003, court papers state.

Tetracycline can have mild to life-threatening side effects, according to an affidavit by Jim Burkhardt, a special agent in the FDA's office of criminal investigations. It can have toxic effects on developing fetuses and can be dangerous when taken in combination with other drugs, including penicillin, according to the Physicians Desk Reference as quoted by Burkhardt.

Angela Vold, a manager in the Northgate store's health and beauty section, said an employee "mistakenly placed the returned medication into a shopping cart where other merchandise is placed for return to the health and beauty section," according to the affidavit.

As a result of the tampering incident, all boxes of the Target brand cold and allergy medicine at the Northgate store were removed from shelves and destroyed, the document states. Also, other Washington state Target stores had planned to move all their products containing pseudoephedrine, a common ingredient in cold medicine that is also used to produce methamphetamine, behind the pharmacist's counter. That move was accelerated as a result of the tampering incident, Burkhardt said.

Authorities were able to identify Ayers by checking records back to March 1 to determine who had returned to the Northgate store the particular type of medicine that was tampered with. Only two customers had done so. The first had the return credited on his credit card; Ayers was the other one.

In addition, Target had video-surveillance records of Ayers making the return. James Dodson, a security officer at the Everett store, recognized Ayers from the video and told investigators Ayers "had been stealing pseudoephedrine products at his Target Store for some time," Burkhardt wrote.

Dodson said he never went after Ayers "because the value of the stolen merchandise" wasn't high enough, Burkhardt stated in his affidavit.

Ayers is charged under the 1983 Anti-Tampering Act, adopted by Congress in response to the still-unsolved poisoning of Tylenol capsules in the Chicago area. Drug-tampering cases have made headlines in Seattle before.

In 1988, Stella Nickell of Auburn was convicted of killing her husband, Bruce, and an Auburn woman, Sue Snow, by putting cyanide into Extra Strength Excedrin capsules and then placing them on store shelves.

Five years later, Joseph Meling of Lacey, Thurston County, was convicted of having poisoned two people as part of a cover-up for trying to kill his wife with cyanide-laced Sudafed capsules. A copy of a Reader's Digest article on the Nickell case was found in Meling's apartment when he was arrested.

Peter Lewis: 206-464-2217 or plewis@seattletimes.com