Former St. Jude Executive Accused of Theft Turns Himself In

A former St. Jude Medical Inc. vice president accused of stealing company trade secrets and cash soon will have the chance to defend his honor.

Bryan C. Szweda, 39, surrendered to Ramsey County, Minn., authorities on Sept. 16 and was released on $100,000 bond, Sgt. John Eastham, spokesman for the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office, told Medical Product Outsourcing. Szweda’s next court date currently is scheduled for Oct. 14, he added.

Authorities have charged Szweda with five counts of theft by swindle and a sixth charge of theft of trade secrets, all of which are felonies. He allegedly stole more than $117,000 from St. Jude Medical through expenses like basketball tickets and strip clubs and then absconding with sensitive company trade secrets when he was fired last year.

Szweda, formerly of Plymouth, Minn., now works for one of St. Jude’s rivals, Irvine, Calif.-based Edwards Lifesciences, which makes artificial heart valves. Though the company is aware of the allegations, officials would not specify whether Szweda is still employed there as senior director of global engineering. “Edwards Lifesciences learned of this matter as it was reported in the media yesterday (Sept. 16). We take these reports very seriously, and are taking urgent action to investigate this matter,” spokeswoman Sarah Huoh told MPO in an email.

Szweda has been a member of MPO’s editorial advisory board, but has been suspended pending the outcome of the criminal investigation.

Szweda worked at St. Jude for five years, most recently as vice president of operations for the company’s global manufacturing of structural heart devices. Before that, he worked for another competitor, Boston Scientific Corp., which had asked him to leave for making “bad purchases,” according to a longtime friend of Szweda’s known by the initials JDE in the criminal complaint.

The complaint claims St. Jude executives were unaware of Szweda’s past bad purchases when he was hired in August 2009 and gave him a company credit card. The complaint — obtained by the Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper — describes a series of thefts dating back to 2010, though some of the allegations are barred by the statutes of limitations. The charged conduct covers a period from March 2012 to July 2014, two months before he was fired from St. Jude Medical.

In the 12-page probable cause statement filed with the charges, Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office investigator Tony Samec said Szweda schemed to make St. Jude pay for expenses ranging from $17,228 in Timberwolves season tickets for 2014-15 to $570 for a Maple Grove go-cart racetrack, the Star Tribune reported. Thousands of dollars in concert tickets and food expenses to see Lady Antebellum, Luke Bryan and Jason Aldean also were allegedly billed to the company, as were $1,259 in charges at Rick’s Cabaret.

“During an interview with SJM management, they were emphatic that there would be no legitimate business reason for going to a strip club,” Samec’s filing states. “Had [St. Jude Medical] known the true nature of the expenses, they would not have approved the payments,”

Other expenses like costly personal meals and rental car use were allegedly mixed in with common workplace thefts like double-billing for travel expenses and phony invoices from contractors, the newspaper claims.

When Szweda was placed on administrative leave in September 2014, the company discovered that he had placed 4,649 files related to his work on an external hard drive, including St. Jude’s 2014-18 strategic plan, “which provides a road map of SJM’s key research and marketing initiatives and is considered one of the company’s most restricted documents,” the complaint alleges. Those files also were copied to Szweda’s home computer and a second external drive. Although the computer and the first drive eventually were given to St. Jude for examination, Samec wrote that he ultimately found the second drive — which was never voluntarily provided to investigators — at his former home in Plymouth, the Star Tribune noted.

By the time investigators executed the search warrant on the home, Szweda had already moved out of state.