BOSTON (AP) — A paramedic has been sentenced in federal court in Boston for stealing fentanyl from ambulances.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Massachusetts says 50-year-old Joseph V. Amello, of Rowley, Massachusetts, was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court to two and a half years in prison and three years of supervised release.

Prosecutors say Amello stole more than 650 vials of fentanyl, a potent opioid, for his own use while working for an ambulance company from about November 2014 to August 2015.

They say that beginning around July 2015, he also replaced fentanyl with saline in a number of vials intended for ambulance patients.


Amello pleaded guilty in June to one count of acquiring a controlled substance by deception, fraud and forgery, and one count of tampering with a consumer product.