Uncover - S30 E5: The Undercover Mother | Bad Results

Episode Date: December 1, 2024

What’s really going on inside Accu-Metrics? Co-host Rachel Houlihan goes undercover, posing as a mother who needs a paternity test. Once inside, she meets face to face with the company’s owner, Harvey Tenenbaum. She also connects with an ex-employee who reveals what he witnessed in the lab.  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.

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.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. He had an intense disposition, but not aggressive. Loved his work, loved his job. Jim McElhaney knows Harvey Tenenbaum, but that's not who he's describing. Jim's a retired jockey, and he rode Harvey's top-performing stallion to victory. Judith Swaldrush was second in the cartier last year, and this year he gets all the marbles. Judith Swaldrush. That's the horse, named after Harvey's wife, Judith. It was a moneymaker. He only paid $7,500 for it.

But in its six years of racing, it earned Harvey about a million bucks. It's my privilege to announce the winner of this award. The winner is Judith's Wild Rush. Thanks to the voters. Yet despite all the prizes and the pageantry, as a jockey, Jim only really interacted with Harvey in the paddock right before the race. Owners are all different. There's some owners who like to spend a lot of time at the barn. Harvey was more up in the grandstand. From there, Harvey would watch and see if today was his lucky day. An owner who's been around longer knows that there are no guarantees in horse racing and anything can happen. So they don't usually get themselves too wound up about any one situation.

And that was Harvey. Unflappable, according to Jim. We don't know much about Harvey, other than the fact that he owns Viaguard Acumetrics. He doesn't return our emails or calls. Though we've learned he's been racing horses since the 70s, and he's owned at least 150 horses over the years. Breach of duty. Immunity. Scandals keep coming. And another top earner. Scam. Yes, Harvey had a horse named Scam. The horse was born in 2010,

a year when Harvey let horse racing take a back seat and his winnings took a nosedive. And perhaps that's because Harvey had a new focus, getting his lab up and running in the east end of Toronto and adding prenatal paternity testing to the Viaguard Acumetrics website. But what about all those horse names? What story did they tell? And more importantly, what's Harvey's story? And can we get it? It's buzzing. It's recording now. There we go. Okay. Well, we do on hidden camera. And the mic. I'm Rachel Houlihan. This is Bad Results, Chapter 5, The Undercover Mother. Hey, can you hear me?

I can hear you. Where are you right now? So we're just on a side street off of Kingston Road. So I just want to go over the game plan and what we're trying to accomplish here just to make sure that I get what we need. What Jorge and I need is to get inside Viaguard Acumetrix. After months of piecing together details from former customers and staff, the only way to get a true picture is to go inside and meet Harvey in person. But I'm not going in as a journalist.

CBC is allowing me to go in undercover, posing as someone needing a paternity test. I am a little nervous, but I think I'm just going to say that. Because I think a lot of people that do go in, or people that are seeking paternity tests in general, are often a little bit nervous. Yeah, yeah. Just roll with it. Just roll with it. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Bye. I'm going to be secretly recording my visit

on a few different devices. Some I'm wearing, some I'm holding. So they're all working now. In the van, my tech support does one last check of the gear. Oh my God. And finally, it's time. Hello. So, hi. Hi. I called a little while ago, and I talked to Mr. or Dr. Herbie Tenenbaum. Uh-huh.

And he said I could come in and have a chat with him about one of the tests that I want to do. Oh, okay. Sure. Have a seat. What's your name? Rachel. Okay, what's the test you want to do, Rachel? A paternity test. Okay, have a seat. Okay, thanks. The waiting room looks like a low-rent dentist's office.

It's very sparse. A few chairs, a plant, and the receptionist is sitting behind a plexiglass window. A few chairs, a plant, and the receptionist is sitting behind a plexiglass window. After a short wait, she unlocks the door to the main office and lets me in. There he is, Harvey Tenenbaum. How are you? Well, I'm here, you're here. I'm here, yeah.

Life goes on. Yeah, where should I start? I just... Start at the beginning. Okay, thank you. At the place. I'm kind of nervous, so... Don't be nervous. Nothing to be nervous.

No? We've seen it all, been there many times. Oh, really? Yes. I, um... Yeah, so I guess I just wanted to get some information about a paternity test. It's nerve-wracking and surreal to finally be here, face-to-face with the

man at the heart of this story. We're sitting in his office. There's a messy paper-covered desk between us. Behind him, I recognize that peculiar black background from his many promotional videos, and I can finally make out what's on it.

Gold horses. Which now makes sense. Who are you testing? Father and one child? That's the normal? Yeah. I have a four-year-old. And so, you know, I was with my current partner.

We broke up briefly. You know, I was with my current partner. We broke up briefly. My story, my cover, is one I've heard countless times from people who used this company. And it goes like this. I'm in a relationship, then there's a breakup, then a rebound. And then... Pregnant, you want to make sure who the father of the four-year-old is. Yeah, and I thought I knew, right?

Like, I thought it was pretty... I know, but it doesn't always work out that way. My current partner is not aware that there was paternity in question. No, no, of course you're not going to make him aware of you, because it may be for nothing. Get the answer, and then you'll decide what you want to do, if anything. Yeah. I was expecting to walk in here and immediately feel like something was wrong. But Harvey is warm and

friendly, almost grandfatherly. If I was here because I actually needed a paternity test, I would feel like he had my back, like he wasn't judging me. We don't want him to know that he's being sampled for DNA purposes. Obviously, what you're telling me, right? Yeah. So do I have to test both potential fathers? No, test one. You just test one. As Harvey talks, I think about Sarah Domenico, the California woman who took Acumetrix to court. When she called Harvey for advice on how to collect DNA,

she says Harvey suggested she send in her partner's nail clippings. And now he's telling me something similar. Does he have a toothbrush? Yep. So a toothbrush, assuming he's the only one using it probably, is a prime source of DNA. Oh, okay. That's easy. That's one way.

There's nothing illegal about what Harvey's suggesting, but I've talked to a few experts, and they tell me this kind of covert DNA collection wouldn't stand up in a child custody case. As for the toothbrush, it can be a good source of DNA, but only as long as no one else has used it or handled it. Which, let's face it, in a shared family bathroom, that's a legitimate risk. The other way, a little more scientific, is say, you know, you have a son or a daughter who's before you're old. Son. Okay. I was at the doctor's office the other day with whatever your son's name is and examine him. And you know, there's a possibility he might be allergic to

gluten. Now Harvey's gone from suggesting I swipe a toothbrush to full cloak and dagger to collect DNA on the sly. And he'll make it easy for me. And we even have a little kit made up that says gluten allergy test. It's the same swabs as there is for DNA, but they don't know that. Oh, I see. No, you have to because people want confidentiality and privacy. They don't want to screw up their life for nothing.

Yeah. Just because you're paranoid, worried about something. You don't want to make scrambled eggs out of what's a smooth situation, but you want the answer. This is something Harvey also told Sarah. Gather the samples surreptitiously so you don't wreck your life. You want the answer, and then you'll decide what to do or not do with that answer. You may throw it in the garbage and forget about it, or you may take another path. Another path.

The way Harvey talks, it sounds like I'm completely in control here. His lab will give me certainty. And with that, I can choose what my life will look like. I think about all the people we've spoken to who made choices based on Acumetrix results. People who ended relationships or broke up families. All because of a single prenatal paternity test. But here's the thing. I'm here posing as a client looking for a paternity test on a child and not as a pregnant woman. That's because we've just learned that Acumetrix no longer

offers the prenatal tests. But Jorge and I don't know why. So I make the segue. Okay. Could I have done this? Like, it did cross my mind four years ago when I was pregnant. Like, could I have saved myself a lot of heartache and actually done this while I was pregnant? You could have, but it would cost you a lot of money. And we used to do a lot of those tests. They're not that accurate.

Because you're depending on... Not that accurate. It almost blows by. Harvey's just casually told me the test his company sold for a decade, the one he promoted for years as being able to give the definitive answer on the question of an unborn baby's paternity. Now he's saying, they're not that accurate. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On 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 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. Because the test was not that accurate, we're literally at that test now. It's pretty good, but pretty good is not good enough. It's the collection of the samples, the cross-contamination possibilities, and there's a lot of other things.

So it's a much more complex situation. Cross-contamination, the go-to reason Acumetrix uses to explain why its prenatal test had a pattern of naming the wrong dads. But Harvey's explanation, and the fact Acumetrix no longer offers the test, does nothing to help the people who relied on them to be accurate. Thinking of Sarah Domenico's complex situation, I ask. What if you, like, were with people of different races? Yeah, that's common. Yeah, and then you have the baby.

And that has happened. I touched a white guy have the baby. And that has happened. Test the white guy and the baby came out black. What the hell's going on here? You know what I mean? Yeah, I could see why you wouldn't want to do that test. Yeah, because there's a lot involved if you get screwed up. Yeah, the stakes seem pretty high. Yeah, because

you're going to get an abortion, but what if it's the wrong guy name? You're aborting your child, you know, the wrong person. Yeah, because you're going to 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. I can imagine that situation, actually. Jorge and I interviewed a couple from Corral's Facebook group, who nearly ended a pregnancy when Acumetrix told them a recent ex-boyfriend was the father.

The woman had the abortion booked, but the results from a second test done by a different company said her current partner was in fact the biological father, so they kept the baby. Right, so maybe, I guess, maybe I'm thankful then I didn't do it when I was pregnant? Yeah, because you may have got the wrong answer or something. And listen, if we could only wind the clock back, we'd all be winding it back right now. But life doesn't work that way, does it? No, it really doesn't. I'm taken aback by everything Harvey is revealing to me.

And I really want to leave and just talk through it all with Jorge. I'm taken aback by everything Harvey is revealing to me, and I really want to leave and just talk through it all with Jorge. But Harvey? He's just getting started, and our conversation meanders into unexpected places. First, he tells me about Acumetrix and the Diefenbaby. Not so famous, but Diefenbaby, a guy who said he was actually the illegitimate son of John Diefenbaker, the prime minister. Yeah, and they wrote it up in a magazine. Oh, wow.

He tells me about the artwork on his walls. Anthony Quinn. He was a great sculptor. He gave me the original sculpture I bought it off him that he did for a movie called Zorba to Greek. Wow. Did he just name drop an old Hollywood star there? And then a dog, as if on cue, comes limping in. This is a three-legged dog that the girl who works here has. Here, I always give him a couple of cookies.

Come here, Homer. The dog is just one of many odd things in this office. Don't you know what that is? No, I don't. That's a 2,400-year-old slingshot from the battle where David slew Goliath. He clarifies that it's not the slingshot used on the Goliath,

but it's the exact type, excavated from some ancient site. How do you know it's real? Because I had certificates from the people that excavated the site and all that type of shit at the time. So,

the Southerners, so they're pretty active on that stuff. Got it. Okay. But real, real you never know. What's real and what?

I'm trying to figure out myself. I don't know yet what's real. For a philosophical question, it's an inoffensive one. The nature of truth. But Harvey, Harvey sells certainty one. The nature of truth. But Harvey, Harvey sells certainty under the guise of science.

He tells people what's true. And then Harvey starts telling me about his latest venture. I don't know if you've ever known anybody with dementia. But it's a very insidious, horrible disease. And it happens to a lot of people just as a result of the aging process. Polyphenols, which are micronutrients present in berries, fruits, this, that, you eat lots. But the problem over the years was... Can't we just eat a lot of berries? It won't help you.

Because your digestive enzymes destroy that therapeutic function. What we have to do is extract the micronutrient and get it into you with what we developed over the last several years called transdermal lotions. You know what a transdermal lotion is? You rub it on your skin, anywhere, no matter where you are, on your body. Harvey is saying he's developed a lotion to stave off dementia. But there currently is no product that will effectively prevent or treat Alzheimer's or related dementias.

So, if Harvey's claim is true, this would be groundbreaking science. According to his LinkedIn page, Harvey has a PhD in pharmacology from the University of Toronto. That's why employees sometimes called him the doctor. We asked the university to confirm his degree, and they found one, a Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy from 1958. But as for the PhD,

the university has no record of one matching the name Harvey Tenenbaum. So that's what we're busy now? That's what you're working on now. Just because you're curious. I am curious, and I see an opening to ask another question. I can't see the lab, can I? Is that weird? Well, we're working down there. I mean, when you come next time, I'll take you down. Yeah? Okay. He doesn't bite. I'm not surprised, but I am disappointed.

I really want to know what's going on in there. Plus, I'd hoped to run into Harvey's right-hand man, Kyle Suey. All right. Thank you very much. Hello. Hi. I'll talk to you in a minute. I notice the other offices are dark and empty, not a soul around. You think about it and see what you want to do. Okay. Thank you very much.

Take care. As I walk out, I wonder, where's Kyle? Is anyone even in the lab downstairs? Pretending to be a customer and talking to Harvey has given me some answers. Harvey's told me the prenatal paternity tests were, quote, not that accurate. But prenatal paternity tests, when done properly, are accurate. Well, there may be another reason Acumetrix kept naming the wrong dads. One unrelated to the persistent excuse of cross-contamination. One that has little to do with science.

Jorge and I are making a lot of calls, still trying to find someone who did the DNA testing in the lab, or at least saw how samples were handled. And then, out of the blue, that someone calls me. The reason I'm asking you about confidentiality is because I'm actually an ex-employee of the company. Oh, okay. Wow. I have full knowledge of how the company operates and what they're doing.

This voice you're hearing, it's an actor reading from a transcript of our interview. We agreed to protect the former employee's privacy because he's scared that any association with Acumetrix will affect his credibility in his current job. It wasn't a very proud moment to be working for this company. Like ex-employees Samantha Friday and Sika Reshot, he was desperate for a job and he was hired on the spot. At first, things seemed fine and he tells me there were no issues, as far as he knows, with postnatal paternity tests or the DNA tests for immigration purposes. But those prenatal tests... Slowly but surely, like, all the red flags started popping out. Like, we get people calling and saying, you know, this was not what I expected. Like, there's no way that this person is the father.

That type of thing. I never directly dealt with those inquiries, so I just sort of dismissed and transferred it to Harvey Tenenbaum. He's also tasked with passing the prenatal paternity samples that come into Acumetrix up the chain to Kyle Suey. So Kyle was, I think, was second in charge. Kyle's name comes up a lot through our investigation. And until now, he's felt like a bit of a ghost.

No one seems to know much about him. But this former employee had regular interactions with Kyle. One day I was asked to enter samples into the computerized system by entering in client detail, that type of thing. And I would always take all of them to Kyle. And then one day I noticed that he was just throwing them in the bin. And then that's sort of when I put two and two together. Some DNA samples, allegedly going straight into the bin, as he

calls it, the garbage. People's questions about paternity, their very futures, treated like trash. What would happen is we'd grab the envelope, enter in their details, the case ID, register their profile, and then put them in this container. That container was supposedly supposed to go to the lab downstairs, but they never did. Well, I saw Kyle just throwing it in the trash outside. There's no way for him to know how many prenatal paternity samples were tossed. Still, it's a damning allegation. But why throw those samples out? Why not just do the test? When I put this to the former employee, he points to the questions in the employee script, those leading questions that Sam and Sika were told to ask

customers. You know, when do you think you got pregnant? Is there someone who's more likely to be the father? Did one of them use protection, one of them not? I can say with almost 100% certainty that this was to try and get them to inadvertently provide the answer as to who the father would likely be. And I think the explanation for that was because it was a very costly and time-consuming process to test it. He's saying it all came down to money. But Kyle was only the second in command. The buck stopped with Harvey. I remember Harvey just coming up with these extravagant products. Basically, if there was a way he thought he could make money, he would do it. I think he preys on people who are vulnerable and naive or people who are desperate.

It's one thing if you're just doing a DNA test for your dog, but it doesn't really affect you too much. But, you know, destroying someone's life or a child's life over a fake DNA test. The former employee soon realized the job wasn't worth the paycheck he so desperately needed. I stayed for about another week. I sort of thought to myself, you know, maybe there's an explanation for this. Maybe it's contaminated or something. But in the end, my conscience just got to me and I had to leave. I couldn't stay. He left Acumetrix, but the company kept going, selling prenatal paternity tests for years

afterwards. And I'm pretty sure even today, if you were to go around the back of the building and look in the trash, you'd find samples. That might be true, but I'm not going dumpster diving to check, because we've learned something else. At this point in our investigation, we've spent a lot of time digging into the science behind prenatal paternity tests, how matches are made, and why false positives are so rare. Experts have also told us that sample collection is best done in a lab setting to avoid cross-contamination, but this is not how

Acumetrix did most of its testing. The main way the company collected the mother's blood sample was through the Fingerprick Home Kit, the one Coral Mayer used to collect her sample in her messy bathroom. And I still had questions about it. The important part of prenatal non-invasive testing is the blood collection from the mob. So we've come to Mohamed Akbari's lab. He's the director of the Molecular Genetics Research Lab

at Women's College Hospital in Toronto. And Akbari says you need at least one vial, 10 milliliters, or two generous teaspoons. And what's even better is two vials, four generous teaspoons, drawn from a vein in a lab. We've confirmed that's the industry standard. So can you even do this at home on your finger? Of course not. Of course not. As far as I know, there is no such a thing for, you know, home-based kit for, you know, prenatal testing. Turns out a finger prick isn't going to yield enough blood.

And that blood collection is not something that could be done at all. So really, if the blood sample wasn't big enough to even run the test, why not toss them in the garbage? But what about all the other ways the company collected samples? Why were those results also wrong? John Brennan, who raised a baby for eight months before learning he wasn't the biological dad, in his case, someone came to his house and drew a couple vials of blood from his and the mom's arm. And then there's Melissa Benton, the woman who'd only slept with one man. She was sent to a local lab for a blood draw and mailed the sample to Acumetrix.

There's no way to know for certain all the reasons these test results turned out to be wrong. But what is certain is that people put their trust in this company, and that trust was misplaced. Like one mistake is unfortunate, but constant errors, it's a scam. There's no one who can listen to what I'm saying and say, no, it is legitimate. They're just making mistakes. How can you be so arrogant to think that you're not going to get caught? How can you be so confident that nothing will come of this?

That confidence might make sense because of this. Acumetrix sits in a regulatory black hole. No government body is making sure this type of DNA laboratory is giving accurate results. We reached out to every province and they all said it was up to the federal government to regulate the industry. So we asked Health Canada, what gives?

And it, in turn, pointed its finger back at the provinces. In this void of any real oversight sits the Standards Council of Canada. The SCC helps certain industries meet international standards, though it's mostly voluntary. Acumetrix got the SCC's gold star of approval in 2014 for one specific test, DNA testing for federal immigration cases. But Acumetrix started to misuse the SCC's logo, making it seem like all of its testing was accredited, including its prenatal paternity tests. So in 2017, the SCC pulled Acumetrix accreditation.

And in the ensuing legal tussle, the SEC inspected the company's laboratory, and we got our hands on the typically confidential report. The inspector flagged things like a failure to log complaints, no records detailing decontamination protocols, along with concerns about how samples were handled and possible cross-contamination. The Standards Council stuck to its guns and refused to reaccredit the company. But it doesn't matter. Acumetrix stays in business with no oversight and no one protecting the public. It's been years since he stepped foot in the Acumetrix office,

but the ex-employee hasn't let go of what he saw. They need to be held accountable. People need jail time. They need it. They need to take responsibility for what they've done. Rachel and I have put all these allegations to Harvey Tenenbaum through his lawyers. They just don't respond. We've discovered getting anyone to take responsibility is easier said than done.

Dr. Harvey Tenenbaum, hey. How are you? I'm Jorge Barrera. I'm a journalist with CBC. Give me a call tomorrow. Why don't we go in and talk about this? I can't talk to you right now. And getting answers is even harder. OK, but there's a lot of victims here. The police will eventually get involved, just not in the way Rachel and I expected. 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 Acumetrics 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 Jorge Barrera and me, Rachel Houlihan. Mixing and producing by AC Rowe. 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 CBCBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.