By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER

Associated Press

BOSTON — A pharmacist charged with murder in a meningitis outbreak that killed 76 people knew that mold and other bacteria were growing inside the filthy production rooms and that drugs shipped to customers were not sterile, but chose to do nothing, a federal prosecutor told jurors Friday.

Glenn Chin, the supervisory pharmacist at the now-closed New England Compounding Center in Framingham, ignored warning signs that his production methods were unsafe and decided instead to gamble with patients’ lives, Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Strachan said during closing arguments.

“This was a crisis of epic proportions, and it was looming … and Glenn Chin just didn’t care,” Strachan said.

Chin, who ran the clean rooms where the drugs were made, is charged with second-degree murder under federal racketeering law, mail fraud and other crimes. He is charged in the deaths of 25 people in Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia and faces up to life in prison if convicted.

Jurors are expected to begin deliberating on Monday.

The 2012 outbreak of fungal meningitis and other infections was blamed on contaminated injections of medical steroids, given mostly to people with back pain.

More than 700 people in 20 states were sickened in what’s considered the worst public health crisis in recent U.S. history. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put the death toll at 64 in 2013. Federal officials identified additional victims in their investigation, raising the total number of deaths to 76.

The outbreak sparked calls for increased regulation of compounding pharmacies, which differ from ordinary drugstores in that they custom-mix medications and supply them directly to hospitals and doctors. After the outbreak, Congress increased federal oversight of compounding pharmacies.