For six years, Kerri Kaley worked at a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, selling the company’s latest surgical innovations to hospitals. But she and about two dozen other salespeople of J&J’s Ethicon Endosurgery got into trouble with federal authorities by selling inventory that hospitals no longer wanted on the gray market, an indictment charged.

Valid prescription medical devices, such as sutures, allegedly were bought by F&S Medical of Delray Beach, Fla., which turned around and dealt the products to other medical facilities.