Uncover - S30 E4: Dogged by controversy | Bad Results

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

After years of expansion into different DNA services, controversies around the company begin to surface — publicly. There’s a lawsuit against the company, journalists (including our co-host Jorge ...Barrera) start sniffing around; and a poodle is falsely identified as an Indigenous person. Meanwhile, prenatal paternity testing quietly disappears from the services on the Viaguard Accu-Metrics website. A legal note: Over the course of this podcast, a number of allegations are made against Viaguard Accu-Metrics and its employees. When asked, company owner Harvey Tenenbaum said he stands by the test, and that any errors were caused by customers during sample collection.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.
Starting point is 00:00:25 On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Today we've got an interview for you with a woman who's making a very bold claim, one that if true would mean we'd have to rewrite the history books. who's making a very bold claim, one that if true would mean we'd have to rewrite the history books. On January 25th, 2017, people living on Canada's east coast
Starting point is 00:00:50 in Newfoundland and Labrador tune into their local CBC Radio drive-home show and hear this. Carol Reynolds-Boyce is a 55-year-old retired school teacher who lives in Wilmington, Delaware. She's got a Facebook page on which she claims she's the
Starting point is 00:01:05 chief of the Beothuk tribe of Newfoundland and North America Reservation Nation. Yes, the Beothuk, said to be extinct since 1820, but very much alive, says Ms. Boyce. It's the stuff of fiction. The lone descendant of a long-lost people steps out of the shadows. When people think that you're extinct and that you're extinct and that you don't exist, they take advantage of that, see? Because they think there's no voice to speak for them. Well, now I'm the voice,
Starting point is 00:01:32 and I'm speaking for my ancestors. Her proof? I took a DNA test for First Nation testing. They have DNA testing for all the tribes up in Canada, up in Ontario. And who did that testing? Viagard, Acumetrix. The very next day, her story gets fact-checked, and questions about the DNA sample are front and center. It infuriates me. Steve Carr is a geneticist at Memorial University who studies the biotics. Carr says no such test exists. Being able to assign any living person as being, yes, you're a biotic, that just can't be done.
Starting point is 00:02:15 So how did Acumetrix get this result? When asked, the company's owner, Harvey Tenenbaum, says simply, quote, well, if we have it in the computer, we got it from somewhere. Not long after, the Biotic references on the Acumetrix website vanish. But it wouldn't be the last time an indigenous ancestry test would catch the company out. And the next time, I would be the reporter getting the tip. A call that would lead to a whole new set of questions about the company's DNA testing services. Either Dion Cal is fucking around with the DNA results, and or a chemist is fucking around with their results.
Starting point is 00:03:00 And at the same time that this biotic story was blowing up, And at the same time that this Biotics story was blowing up, thousands of kilometers away, a woman named Sarah Domenico had her own questions about the company. And she would do something very few would try when burned by Accumetrix. She would take them to court. You're the company that's supposed to provide me with results. I was pissed.
Starting point is 00:03:30 I'm Jorge Barrera. This is Bad Results, Chapter 4, Dog by Controversy. I was an independent woman, had a lucrative career. I was wild and free and young. The story of Sarah's court battle with Viagard Acumetrics begins in 2013. She's just ended a years-long on-again, off-again relationship. She's hanging out in downtown Oakland when she sees this guy going by on his bicycle. And he just was the most beautiful man I'd ever seen. We both look at each other and it was just like eye contact. And I was just smitten. And I really fell for this guy instantly. One thing leads to another with this guy and, well, sparks fly.
Starting point is 00:04:19 She'll call him John to protect his privacy. In the fall of 2013, a couple weeks after meeting John, Sarah finds out she's pregnant. It's a surprise. A good one. She's 36. It's when your biological clock starts to tick, you know. I was just excited that I was pregnant. I was happy that I was going to have a baby. But her calculations tell her that her ex, a guy she's calling Micah, also to protect his privacy, well, he's probably the dad. So she tells John she's pregnant and is going back to Micah. I just really wanted, more than anything, to have my child have their father from day one.
Starting point is 00:05:06 It's probably Micah. And I moved forward with Micah as if it were his. But there's this nagging little worry. What if she's wrong? John is black. Micah is white. I just kept having this, what if I would just never want to do that to somebody.
Starting point is 00:05:27 I would never want somebody to catch the wrong baby that's not theirs and go through the whole process. That's why I wanted to get the test. When Sarah lands on the Acumetrix website, she's drawn to it. Lots of infographics, lots of information, very accessible. Just it seemed as if they were completely legitimate. And even though she's told Micah she's pregnant, Sarah doesn't want him to know she's not sure he's actually the dad, but she needs his DNA sample for the test. And I had called and talked to, I believe it was the owner, Harvey Tenenbaum. How do you get samples from someone you're not ready to tell what's going on? Harvey tells her, nail clippings.
Starting point is 00:06:17 In January 2014, Sarah sends in the first set of samples. Her blood, a mouth swab from John, and nail clippings from Micah, which she gathers on the sly. She's now three months pregnant and desperate to know. I called several times, and I literally begged them to give me my results. And there is this one receptionist. She was so cruel. Every time I called. And it was like, lady, I'm pregnant.
Starting point is 00:06:48 Can you be nice? Obviously, you deal with these tests and you know the sensitivity of them. But, you know, do you have to be a jerk about it? I'm just trying to figure out my test results. This goes on for six weeks. Call after call. Until until finally Sarah gets an answer. According to Viagra Documetrics, John is the biological dad. Micah's results? Micah is inconclusive. And I was like, what does that mean? And she said, well, it's just inconclusive. And so I could send another sample in for Micah if I wanted to.
Starting point is 00:07:28 But I asked, why would I send another sample in if John is positive? She said, some people just want a definitive yes or no. That's what Sarah wants. A definitive yes or no. So she drops another $200 on top of the $800 she's already shelled out. This time, she swipes Micah's used razor blades for the test. Micah is still in the dark about Sarah's doubts. She's now six months pregnant and still waiting for that yes or no.
Starting point is 00:08:01 I just had a sense of, I trust them, they'll give me the right results, and when I get them, then I'll know what to do. But the results from Micah's sample come back as inconclusive for a second time. So Sarah breaks the news to Micah. I told him that he was not the father and he didn't believe me. And I vaguely remember sort of a fight about, you know, I told him I got this result from this company and I think he suggested, well, what about a second opinion? I said, no, I got the results. And I just believed that Vygard Acumetrix had given me the solid information. It never crossed my mind that, oh, I'm going to get the wrong, I'm going to get some false positives today. Sarah packs up her stuff and leaves the spacious apartment she shares with Micah.
Starting point is 00:09:04 And so I moved in with John and he's a 23-year-old bachelor. And so I cleaned as best I could and I cook. And so I tried to make the best of that. John dotes on Sarah and his family embraces her. He was very attentive and he was very loving and he was very excited. He rubbed my belly and he wanted to go to the appointments and he wanted to go to the prenatal classes. It's a first pregnancy for them both. And together, they plan a California birth. John and I had gone to pre-birthing classes and breathing and ecstatic birth and, you know, all these hippy-dippy sort of things. So I thought I was really prepared for birth.
Starting point is 00:10:02 When Sarah's contractions begin, her room at the Berkeley Birthing Center is ready. The midwives are waiting, the lights dimmed. It's going to be sublime. Well, it was 28 hours of the worst pain I've ever experienced in my life. I was cursing like a sailor. I just was like, ah, you know. John is there through the pain, the cursing. He also has a specific assignment. John caught our baby. And just, I remember this, like, looking at his hands. And it was darkly lit, but it's obvious,
Starting point is 00:10:48 you know, it's obvious that when a big black man and his big, beautiful hands catches a white baby, it's pretty obvious. And it was just like, oh no, it broke him. It broke John. And I feel so sad if I ruined his dreams or, you know, somehow destroyed him emotionally. And it's the thing I was trying to avoid. And I tried to figure that out with Viaguard Acumetrix and the one thing that I didn't want to happen
Starting point is 00:11:32 happened anyway. And once again, she's on the phone. Called Acumetrix, sobbing like, what's going on here? There's something wrong. She doesn't look like the baby you told me I was going to have.
Starting point is 00:11:50 She keeps asking to speak with Harvey, but now Harvey is never around. I was scared, and I wanted to talk to somebody besides the receptionist, the main one. And she told me I had done this to myself. That's what she said and it's like yeah that's true but fuck you excuse my language like you know how dare you be a company that provides this service and then treat people like garbage. So Sarah tells the receptionist, find me someone else to speak with.
Starting point is 00:12:33 She transferred me to the lab technician named Kyle. And Kyle told me that he had never seen this happen in the two years he'd been working there. And said I would be refunded. He would call me back. He never calls back. So she does the American thing. She lawyers up. And on the day of her daughter's second birthday, Sarah files a lawsuit against Acumetrix.
Starting point is 00:12:55 I really want to take this to court because I don't want this to ever happen again. I want them held accountable and I want them to be punished and to pay. And not necessarily to me, but to pay such a large sum that possibly they go out of business.
Starting point is 00:13:23 It's Good Friday, 2017, when Sarah Domenico arrives at a U.S. federal court building for the Northern District of California. It's been 10 months since she filed her lawsuit against Acumetrix. 10 months of paper sparring, the usual in civil litigation. She's seeking damages for the despair, frustration, and humiliation Acumetrix inflicted by its wrong results. It's a big moment. Sarah's doing what no other victim has done, pursuing a case against Acumetrix. For its part, Acumetrix's filings say Sarah's got no case and it should be tossed. The judge came out and said I'm going to have in chambers discussions with both of you and we'll see what we can figure out. Accumetrix is here to settle. They've put an offer on the table. Sarah though, she wants to go to
Starting point is 00:14:22 trial. She's determined to put this company out of business. But inside the judge's chambers, she feels like she's the one on trial. being so upright so basically saying that because I had slept with multiple people and wasn't sure who the father was that somehow the jury would see me as not a credible victim I don't that was kind of the gist. They would think you're really slutty and a terrible person. So why, so don't, don't bring it into, to a jury. So I ended up settling. Sarah signs on the dotted line, agreeing to Acumetrix terms, which means she can't disclose the financial details of the settlement. She didn't get the accountability she wanted, but at first, Sarah feels that the settlement is kind of a win.
Starting point is 00:15:33 Definitely still felt vindicated because obviously, I mean, in a settlement, they're not saying that they're guilty, that they're guilty, but obviously they were willing to settle with the financial sum that kind of made it that they knew that they had done something wrong. She marries Micah. They have two children. Life, it flows on. But seven years later, there's still regret. Regret she listened to advice that reduced her to a caricature, the loose woman. It flattened everything she had gone through, turned all her emotions, from heartbreak to anger, into a single feeling, shame. And this specific type of shame runs through the stories of almost every woman we interviewed for this podcast. And this shame kept them isolated, sapping the will to fight the company. I shouldn't have settled. I should have
Starting point is 00:16:37 gone for it. I should have just been like, you know what? I will take on all the jurors because my story is true and my story should never happen to anyone else. But it does, over and over again. People turning to Acumetrix and then later finding out the person named as the father is wrong. The same pattern, for years. In the end, Sarah's lawsuit didn't seem to make much of a dent in Acumetrix's business. So it continued, relatively unfazed, branching out into different DNA markets, both overseas and at home, including testing for indigenous ancestry. And that's when I got the call that pulled me onto Acumetrix Trail. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs.
Starting point is 00:17:45 We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. October 13th, 2016 is when the DNA test came out. And who did that testing?
Starting point is 00:18:17 Viagard, Acumetrix. The first time I hear the name Acumetrix is while listening to this story about the woman who believed she was Beothuk. It catches my attention because at the time I'd been reporting on stories about pretendians or people pretending to be indigenous. And this Beothuk story has some of those same hallmarks. hallmarks. Shortly after it airs, I get a tip from ex-members of a Quebec group that calls itself the Confederation of Aboriginal People of Canada. They tell me the group is also using acometrics for Indigenous ancestry testing, and there's something off about it. The Confederation sells membership cards that the group claims give Indigenous status, granting cardholders the right to hunt, fish, and buy cars tax-free. But to get a card, you need to prove you're Indigenous. And one of the ways to do that? A DNA test,
Starting point is 00:19:19 which is done by Acumetrix, at a cost of $250 a pop. The company stands to make an awful lot of money. Thank you for calling our award-winning laboratory testing and research center. You are now being connected to a professional service representative. So I start making calls. DNA testing, how may we help you? Hi, my name is Jorge Barrera. I'm a reporter with CBC. Right, so I did forward your message to the rights department. He's gone for the day. You know, it's in you guys' interest to talk to me about
Starting point is 00:19:59 this situation because it's sort of a big deal. But they don't want to talk. They bounce me to the leader of the Confederation of Aboriginal People. You're going to give me a number? Right. And that's who you're going to talk to. Okay. And what's his name again?
Starting point is 00:20:14 Gren. Chief. Carly. It's actually pronounced Carl. All the work is done through him. All the work is done through him, sir. So I make that call. Hello. Hello, Grand Chief Carl. My name is Jorge Barrera. I'm a reporter with CBC. And the reason I'm calling is it's about this issue of DNA tests with BioGuard Acumetrix.
Starting point is 00:20:41 Yes. Do you trust their results? Absolutely. And I'd be very surprised if you can find anything illegal because they're quite squeaky clean, I gotta tell you. But some of Carl's ex-members, they're not so sure. I had doubts as far as Acumetrix was concerned. Daniel Brabant is a former member of the Confederation. He heard rumors that there's something funny going on with the Acumetrix indigenous DNA test. Things like multiple people getting eerily identical ancestry results. So he turns to his dog, a French poodle named Molly. He swabs Molly the poodle, then he puts the swab in a plastic bag, packs it up in a box, and sends
Starting point is 00:21:25 it off to be tested by Acumetrix. The results came out about a month and a half, two months afterward, and my bitch has got a 5% Indian blood in her system. It's a giant poodle. So it's somehow doubtful. Yup, according to Acumetrix results, Molly the poodle has indigenous ancestry. So I call Acumetrix back.
Starting point is 00:21:54 Hello? And I get the runaround again. Yep. Sir, doctor, he's gone for the day. Okay, well, I mean, the issue is that two people separately submitted DNA samples to Viagard directly, and they received results that they had Native American ancestry, but they actually sent DNA samples from their dogs. So I need to speak with Mr. Tenenbaum about this because he's the company owner, right? Yeah, okay, so I'm going to relay the message.
Starting point is 00:22:33 CBC News reporting Torpedo's Grand Chief Carl's group. He's eventually charged with fraud for selling those fake Indigenous status cards. Around the same time, he was also convicted for sex crimes involving a minor. But that case is unrelated to this DNA testing investigation. Carl is still facing trial on the fraud charges. But what about Harvey and Acumetrix's responsibility for the indigenous ancestry testing? When I approached them, the company refuses interview requests. They send a statement in an email. It basically says these indigenous ancestry tests have no legal value anyway,
Starting point is 00:23:14 and they blame the messed up results on the customers, who they say probably contaminated the samples. It's Acumetrix's go-to explanation. They stopped offering the indigenous DNA testing, but they're still in the dog DNA testing business. And dogs keep tripping Acumetrix up. We're enlisting the help of three special pooches and sending their DNA to four companies who promise to identify a dog's breed with near 100% accuracy. CBC's Consumer Affairs Show Marketplace is testing dog breed DNA companies.
Starting point is 00:23:56 It's now March 2023, and one of the four companies tested is Viagard Acumetrix. Marketplace sends in DNA samples from three dogs for testing, but it also sends a sample from a human. This shows host Travis Danraj pretending it's from a dog. The fourth dog, it's me. The Danraj sample should come back as a failed test, but the Acumetrix result? I'm a shepherd.
Starting point is 00:24:29 No kidding. Acumetrix tripped up by a dog again. The Marketplace investigation exposes clear issues with the company's DNA testing services. You see, Acumetrix also asks CBC for either a picture of the dog or its suspected breed. So CBC says, Shepard. Marketplace asks Acumetrix about Travis' result. Acumetrix said it was likely sample ID numbers that were mixed up. But these issues, they'd been noticed by people who worked inside the company. Let's say for doggy DNA testing. We saw it being done without any equipment.
Starting point is 00:25:09 People like Samantha Friday, who worked at Acumetrix, she told my colleague Rachel that she had suspicions about this particular type of test. What does that mean, you saw it being done? Irrelevant information being asked and figuring it out by the irrelevant information. So again, if you're testing that DNA really and truly, all I need to know is what's the doggy's name so I can put it on his little certificate. So what Sam is suggesting here is that Accumetrix uses customer information, not actual DNA, to come up with its results. But if we want to confirm this,
Starting point is 00:25:55 to get direct answers about what is happening inside the lab, we need to get to Harvey. Yet every time we feel like we're getting closer to him, closer to the truth. He slips away. All the work is done through him. All the work is done through him, sir. Mr. Tenbaugh, can you hear me? No, he's not here, sir. That's just somebody that left for the day. That's as close as I get to him, a voice in the background. All the work is done through him. So Rachel and I come up with a plan.
Starting point is 00:26:27 And that plan is going to take me a little out of my comfort zone. It's buzzing. It's recording now. There we go. Okay. I've got a hidden camera and I'm taking our questions directly to Harvey.
Starting point is 00:26:38 Yeah, the stakes seem pretty high. Yeah, because you're gonna get an abortion, but what if it's the wrong guy name? You're aborting your child, you know, the wrong person. Yeah, I can't imagine that. Well, you can imagine everything happens in life. And then I get a surprise call. I have full knowledge of how the company operates and what they're doing.
Starting point is 00:26:59 That's why I'm asking to be completely anonymous. I don't want this getting back to me somehow. That's next time on Bad Results. A legal note here. Over the course of this podcast, you're going to hear a number of allegations made against Viagard Acumetrix and its employees. When asked, company owner Harvey Tenenbaum said he stands by the test and that any errors were caused by customers during sample collection. Bad Results is written and reported by Rachel Houlihan and me, Jorge Barrera. Mixing and producing by AC Rowe.
Starting point is 00:27:38 Jessica Lindsay is our showrunner and Carla Hilton is our executive producer. Special thanks to the folks at CBC Podcasts for their support. Karen Burgess is managing editor for CBC News Podcasts. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.

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