In­spired by Break­ing Bad to make ricin, ex-biotech ex­ec sen­tenced for ly­ing to FBI

A for­mer biotech re­searcher who said he was in­spired by the hit TV show “Break­ing Bad” to try to make ricin — a dead­ly poi­son — out of cas­tor beans has been spared prison but sen­tenced to pro­ba­tion and home con­fine­ment for ob­struc­tion of jus­tice.

Ish­ti­aq Ali Saaem, who holds a PhD in bio­med­ical en­gi­neer­ing and was iden­ti­fied as a for­mer “di­rec­tor of ad­vanced re­search” at an un­named biotech com­pa­ny in Mass­a­chu­setts, first caught the at­ten­tion of FBI agents in 2015 when he placed an on­line or­der for 100 pack­ets of cas­tor beans, each con­tain­ing eight seeds.

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