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(BCN) — Federal prosecutors have introduced charges in opposition to a Los Altos guy for alleged securities and wellness care fraud connected to his COVID-19 and allergy tests business, according to a grievance in the Northern District of California.
Mark Schena, 57, is the president of the Sunnyvale-based Arrayit Company, which allegedly compensated kickbacks and bribes to both equally recruiters and medical professionals from 2018 to 2020 to perform allergy assessments applying Arrayit’s goods on clients regardless of their health care necessity.
Arrayit allegedly claimed to both probable traders and health care gurus that the company’s “microarray technology” could display for about 120 allergens with a drop of blood about 250,000 occasions smaller than the minute quantity touted by the now-defunct health technology company Theranos.
“The attract of low-cost, reliable alternate options to today’s normal blood exam panels has captured the creativity of the health treatment business, generating such alternate options a prime matter for fraudsters,” U.S. Lawyer for the Northern District of California David Anderson mentioned in a assertion. “The plan described in the complaint, in which the defendant allegedly leveraged this attract by appending the anxiety of the COVID-19 pandemic, quantities to a cynical multi-million-greenback hoax.”
At the time the COVID-19 pandemic started in March 2020, Arrayit also allegedly produced fake claims about its ability to exam for COVID properly, reliably and cheaply, according to the complaint, which was unsealed past 7 days.
Schena has been billed with one count of securities fraud and a person depend of conspiracy to commit well being treatment fraud. In accordance to the complaint, Arrayit submitted extra than $69 million in wrong promises for allergy and COVID screening.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the prices introduced against Schena depict the initially pandemic-related securities fraud cost federal prosecutors have pursued.
“This defendant allegedly defrauded Medicare as a result of unlawful kickbacks and bribes, and then turned to exploiting the pandemic by fraudulently advertising an unproven COVID-19 test to the market place,” said Brian Benczkowski, an assistant lawyer basic with the Justice Departments’s Felony Division.
In accordance to the criticism, Schena compared Arrayit’s change from tests for allergens to screening for COVID to a baker who converts from selling “strawberry pies” to providing “rhubarb and strawberry pies.”
The company’s stock rate surged in March 2020, but Schena and other executives with Arrayit allegedly unsuccessful to disclose precise knowledge about how precisely it could exam for COVID, in accordance to federal prosecutors.
Folks with information about possible COVID-connected fraud or tried fraud are encouraged to make contact with the Justice Department’s Nationwide Middle for Catastrophe Fraud at (866) 720-5721 or by checking out
https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-grievance-kind
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