Uncover - S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results

Episode Date: November 30, 2024

In September 2024, a senior employee at Viaguard Accu-Metrics is sentenced for running an unrelated $6 million hair-testing scam. Will this development prompt the police to investigate his former employer as well? Will it finally push Tenenbaum to comment on the record? And what options remain for John, Corale and the other customers living with the long term impact of their bad results? 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. It's September 17th, 2024, and I've just arrived at the U.S. Federal Courthouse in White Plains, New York. I'm here for a sentencing hearing, and I can't be late, because the guy being sentenced is someone we've been wanting to talk to since this investigation began. Kyle Sui. Right. To be honest, we have a lab looking into the issue. Rachel and I have heard a lot about Kyle through our investigation. He's the voice on the other end as Codal and her mom try to get answers over the telephone from Accumetrix. We're trying to figure out what happened on our end.

I mean, I don't deal with the lab in that situation. I just deal with the administrative side. From 2013 until at least 2020, Kyle was the technical manager at Accumetrix overseeing sample collection. You did the test, Kyle? Correct. And the testing is 99.99% accurate. And it turns out he also had a side hustle, AllergyTestingCompany.com. It offered hair analysis testing for over 800 potential food and environmental sensitivities.

Everything from egg yolk to swine urine protein to formaldehyde. Thing is, it wasn't exactly on the up and up, and it caught the attention of United States Postal Inspection Service agents. Kyle was arrested while on vacation in Madrid in 2023 and charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of frauds and swindles. And when he was extradited to the U.S., he pleaded guilty and provided all the details of his crimes to the court. Here's an actor reading from that transcript. I knowingly and intentionally engaged in a scheme

to defraud customers of food and environmental sensitivity testing services that were purchased online through an e-commerce store. Customers sent their hair samples to a rented mailbox in a town just north of New York City. Over the course of several months, Kyle took in about $6 million from more than 88,000 people. While buyers believed that their hair samples would be analyzed, the samples were instead discarded on my direction and false test results were provided to the customers.

There was no test. He simply tossed the samples in the garbage. I knew that my conduct was wrong and illegal. After his plea, Kyle went back to jail to await sentencing. And that's why I'm here at this courthouse. After his plea, Kyle went back to jail to await sentencing. And that's why I'm here at this courthouse. Today will mean justice for victims of Kyle's hair testing scam. But for Corral and John and all the other people we met in this investigation, today's sentencing might also be another piece in the puzzle. Another way to get the answers they still need about Viagard

oculometrics. You're receiving the definitive answer of the paternity of the fetus. Obviously legit. It's a DNA company. I was pissed. Trusted those results? She doesn't look like the baby you told me I was going to have. It's devastating. It's just some fucked up nightmare. What do you mean

he's not my son? It was like a death. The test was not that accurate. And the man with those answers, the company's owner? My name is Harvey Tenenbaum. He remains far away from any courtroom. For Viagard Acumetrics, a leading DNA firm. I'm Jorge Barrera. This is Bad Results, Chapter 6, Travesty.

Lab testing. Dr. Harvey, please. Speaking. Kyle's guilty plea opens another door in our investigation. So I call Acumetrix, hoping to talk to Harvey about him. To my surprise, Harvey picks up. Hello, Dr. Harvey Tenenbaum. You see, we've heard from a former Acumetrix employee who alleges he saw Kyle tossing prenatal paternity samples into the garbage.

I saw Kyle just throwing it in the trash outside. So I put it to Harvey. Did Kyle throw out samples while working at Acumetrix? Because we know and I know that Kyle was working for you when he started this side, this business, right? So there's questions around, you know, he told the judge. We have the transcript. We told the judge he threw away samples, and I wanted to know if he was doing that when he was with you, if you're aware that he was doing that.

No. Because no? The answer to that's no. But send it in writing, and I'll research it and check it out for you. Listen, send it in. If it's appropriate, you'll get an answer. OK? Another surprise. Harvey actually answers the email I send. It's the one and only time he'll respond to any of our emailed questions. And in that email, Harvey says that Kyle's no longer an employee.

He says he doesn't know anything about Kyle's U.S. case and won't comment any further. But we still have questions for him about the finger prick tests, about whether samples were tossed, about his, Harvey's, scientific credentials. We wrote long emails detailing all the allegations we'd gathered and we sent those to both Harvey and his lawyers. They all went unanswered. So we figure out a new plan to put this all to Harvey in person to try something that in our business is called a jump. When was the last time it even snowed and it's got to snow today?

Yeah. I don't know. You guys nevered? And it's got to snow today. Yeah. I don't know. You guys never get snow. The tropics down here. It's late March 2024, a couple months after Kyle's guilty plea. Rachel and I are parked with a good view of the back door to the Acumetrix lab.

Harvey doesn't know we're here, so our hope is to catch him off guard a little, get him to answer our questions on the record. And now we just wait. We wait a bit and then he emerges. Harvey's 91 now and walking with a bit of a stoop shuffle through the falling snow. Dr. Harvey Tenenbaum, hey. How are you? I'm Jorge Barrera.

I'm a journalist with CBC. How are you, sir? I'm all right, thank you. And the reason, I just want a moment of your time, because we've talked to, like, dozens of people whose lives have been upended by your laboratory's prenatal paternity tests. Well, you know, you do thousands of tests,

and half the errors are the collection problem. Give me a call tomorrow. Why don't we go in and talk about this? I can't talk to you right now. Because I know that you knew these tests were flawed, but you still kept selling them. No, no, the tests were never flawed. The tests are accurate.

The tests are perfect, he says. Accurate. It's the fault of the customers. It's the cross-contamination. Harvey's now just a few feet from his Mercedes. I'm walking sideways and backwards, trying not to block his path between a wooden fence and his car. Harvey told Rachel and Hidden Camera

they'd stop offering the prenatal paternity test because the test was, quote, not that accurate. Well, when, do you still do prenatal paternity test because the test was, quote, not that accurate. Well, when do you still do prenatal paternity tests? No. When did you stop doing that? Years ago. Like how, when? Because we have evidence from 2020, 2021. Well, that might have been the last test.

Yeah? And why did you stop them? Couldn't get the reagents at the right price. I don't know if you caught that word, reagents. It's a substance used in DNA testing to trigger a chemical reaction. So he's telling me that the company didn't pull the test because they got the results wrong, but because they got too expensive to run. We haven't heard that one before. I keep prodding for answers as Harvey gets into the driver's seat of his car.

There's dozens of lives that have been upended by these tests. They believed in you. They believe what you said, that your tests were ironclad. But you have to call me tomorrow. Excuse me. Okay, so we can come in and we can sit down and talk. You call me, don't come in until you call. Okay. All right. Harvey's windows are completely covered with snow. He backs up and smacks his vehicle into the wooden fence, flashes the wipers, and drives off. Calling BioGuard Acumetrix. So we take Harvey at his word and call Acumetrix the next day.

DNA testing, fingerprinting, how may I help you? Good morning. Dr. Harvey Tenenbaum, please. What is this regarding? This is Jorge Barrera from CBC. We spoke yesterday and he told me to call him today to set up... Yeah, no, he's not interested in talking to anybody. He doesn't know anything. He doesn't know anything about what? It has nothing to do with him personally. Jorge, are you listening? I am listening. This is harassment, okay?

He will call the police next time you try this. Okay, but there's a lot of victims here. So, we try another route and call one of his lawyers. Well, then you can speak to him. You can't talk to me about it. You talk to him about it. Yeah, but I'm trying, but he doesn't want to sit down and explain how he can... The lab continually had wrong prenatal paternity test results.

Like, this is over, like, a decade. If he doesn't want to explain it, then that's his prerogative. But it's not my prerogative to... But it's your dad, and we're about to air stuff about this. Yep. At the time, this lawyer, one of Acumetrix lawyers,

is Harvey Tenenbaum's son, Sheldon Tenenbaum. That's something you have to discuss with him, though. I know, but maybe you can help convince him that it's in his best interest to sit down and talk to us about this. I can ask him if he wants to make a comment, and otherwise, that's as far as I can go. Because we're talking probably a decade of lives completely upended by these wrong prenatal paternity tests. And we've spoken to experts who say that, you know, the instances of false positives that Viagra delivered,

almost impossible. Same with false negatives. And that the amount of blood that's being drawn in these home kits would make it almost impossible to actually do prenatal paternity testing at all. And these are lives, right? These are real people who lose a child, gain a child. Now, I'm really not interested in discussing it further. I made it clear to you that as a lawyer, I can only discuss what my client allows me to. And it's not my job to get you a story, okay? If you want to speak to him directly... We have the story. We didn't need Sheldon's help to get us a story.

We'd been chasing one for months with all these different threads. And that's how I ended up here at a federal courthouse in White Plains, New York, for the sentencing of Kyle Suey. 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 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. Hello, can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. It's just after 3 p.m., September 17, 2024.

I'm standing at the bottom of the courthouse steps. The judge has handed down Kyle's sentence and I'm calling Rachel to tell her what happened. Like, what did he look like? What was his demeanor? Kyle walked in, his head shaved, wearing Hudson Correctional Centre green, looked at his family,

gave a quick little thumbs up before it all started. They were really quiet throughout, barely moved throughout the whole hearing, listening intently. That family included Kyle's sister, his elderly mother and father, and his wife, Ellen. Many had written letters of support describing Kyle as an attentive and caring husband and father. Kyle's lawyer is asking for his release with time served, but the prosecution wants a sentence of 41 months, almost three and a half years in prison. The big factor in this, and I think this sort of rings with the people we've been speaking to about prenatal paternities and acumetrics is that both the prosecutors and the judge talked about the victims and what they were purchasing.

It wasn't so much how much money, the dollar amount. It was about what they were purchasing, which was health-related issues. Kyle has a 10-year-old and a 9-year-old, and the judge at one point actually said, you know, imagine someone with a 9-year-old child that, you know, does this test, and they send it to your company, and they get back a report saying bunk results, and something terrible happens to the child. How would you feel if that was your child? So that was the clincher, the judge sides with the prosecution.

Kyle is sentenced to 41 months. Sitting through the rehashing of Kyle's crime during the sentencing hearing, I'm struck by the familiar ring of the details. The mail order testing kits, samples tossed in the trash. It matches a similar pattern that's emerged in our investigation of Acumetrix. The company advertised it had offices in places like New York City and London, UK, but they were really just P.O. boxes, like in Kyle's hair testing scam. I search out Kyle's lawyer.

So first, how do I say your last name? Lickman. Lickman. Jeffrey Lickman is the real deal. A top New York City criminal lawyer. Client list includes John Gotti Jr., Al Chapo, and P. Diddy's kid, Justin Combs. We came across your client, Kyle Suey, because of his work with Accumetrix, and there he's being accused of doing the same thing he admitted to here, which was throwing out

samples. And I'm just wondering if you have heard of his involvement with Accumetrix. We've heard about it. We understand there's been an investigation nothing's come up and nothing and yeah nothing has has come of it and who did the investigation of an acumetrix it was uh it was in toronto it was in canada oh like toronto police looked into it and they just didn't we don't know what their what their decision is or if they're even done with their investigation but we know we haven't heard back from them we've spoken to them and they know we exist and we're prepared to speak to them about it if they if they desire this is news to us we know kudal called the toronto police a couple of times to file a complaint but they told her there was nothing they could do and she should try going to the North Bay Police.

She was told by the North Bay cops to maybe try the Ontario Provincial Police. Cudal got nowhere. Rachel and I called as well. All dead ends. But now Kyle's lawyer is saying there might be an investigation. So armed with this new information, we reach out to the Toronto Police again. And they give us an official statement. There's nothing about an Accumetrix investigation in their system.

What started out as a promising lead goes cold. The authorities don't seem to be that interested in Accumetrix. I think this year has to be the year we need to stop them. Taking legal action against Acumetrix comes up a lot amongst the members of Coral's Facebook group. I agree. I'm actually going to call my lawyer right after this. Okay, I'm going to mess with mine. So in the beginning, I was in touch with a few attorneys, and originally they had said that in order for us to pursue this on such a large scale, the more of us we get together, the better it is. But here's a bitter pill.

Because the direct-to-consumer prenatal paternity tests Acumetrix sold aren't regulated in Canada, there really aren't many ways to seek accountability. Plus, there's generally a two-year statute of limitation on personal injury cases. From the moment someone realizes the prenatal paternity test named the wrong dad, the legal clock starts ticking to file a claim. But those two years can pass in a blink in the midst of emotional turmoil. The California mother, Sarah Domenico, she managed to sue Acumetrix, but only because she filed her claim exactly two years, to the day, after her daughter's birth. This is why Codal and her Facebook group reached out to us in the first place. Right now, our investigation is the only way for them

to get answers. For the vast majority of them, including Codal, it's likely too late to sue. It's been four years since Codal sent her first DNA test samples to Acumetrix. Four years since that first gender reveal party. DNA test samples to Acumetrix. Four years since that first gender reveal party. Caudal was just a teenager then, waiting on prenatal paternity test results from Acumetrix. Today, things are different in Caudal's life. In a video shot this summer, her daughter Harlow holds a water gun. On cue, she pulls the trigger. Blue dye shoots out. Codal is pregnant again.

It's a boy! Standing next to her is the baby's father. And when Harlow sprays him with blue dye, he laughs. This man is helping raise four-year-old Harlow, and their life is pretty settled. But all these years later, Codal is still simply trying to fix the paperwork. The man that is listed on my daughter's birth certificate is the person that Viagard told me

was the father back when I was pregnant. So he's still on there now to this day. Every time that her birth certificate has to be taken out, I think of the situation that caused that name to be on there that is not supposed to be on there. It's a reminder of the whole situation that did happen with Fire Guard. Like Coddell, John Brennan is still trying to come to terms with what happened to his family. Put out, John Brennan is still trying to come to terms with what happened to his family. The devastation of finding out he had no biological connection to the baby he'd raised for eight months. Even today, almost a decade after giving up a child he loved,

the pain he endured when he goes back there, it's still raw. I'm not like a feelings kind of guy. I don't know how to, you know, I don't know how to navigate through these feelings. It's such a hard thing to go through. So I took this job and pretty much signed up to just never be home again. And I'm in a different city every week. And I'm in a different city every week, and I'm alone. Just me drinking and trying to cope the only way that I know how. I mean, a year of my life just on the road, alone, with nothing but my thoughts. alone with nothing but my thoughts. Really, really, really difficult time of my life to try to to try to tackle as a 22 year old kid. His friend Delano tried to help.

He was lost. Like he was lost. I could tell the way he was coping was not good. It was a slippery slope to the bottom. He was leaving everyone behind. He was leaving. He didn't want to come around. He didn't want to talk to anyone. Yeah, so he was, like, vanishing slowly, just disappearing from us. I guess mentally it just kind of did something to me where I've already gone through this whole thing once and it was a scam, the whole thing was fake.

And so I've always been of the mindset that I'm never going to have kids again. I thought about getting a vasectomy very shortly after this because I'm like, there's no way I'm going through this again. He didn't go through with the operation. Eventually, he found love again. He's engaged now and imagines a family. Where I'm at right now in life, you know, 30 years old,

things are different now. And I, you know, come to a much better place mentally and an extremely healthy relationship with someone that I love. And it's good to kind of have that, that like, that feeling of positivity that this isn't how it has to be. Like I can have a kid one day.

But he remains permanently marked from his first time as a parent, in more ways than one. Yeah, for some reason, it was the right idea at the time for me to go to a tattoo shop and get his name tattooed on my arms. So that's what I did. The baby's name, Travis, in large cursive script on the inside of his right bicep. Years later, after John had time to process what he'd lost, all that happened.

He got the tattoo updated. Now, it says travesty. Luckily, it doesn't come up very often. People just kind of see it and maybe can't read what it says. But occasionally, yeah, somebody will ask me what it says and I just say, it says travesty. And yeah, I hope to not have to get into the whole story, but occasionally I kind of do, you know.

It's not an easy story to tell. Bad Results is written and reported by me, Jorge Barrera. And me, Rachel Houlihan. Mixing and producing by A.C. Rowe. Jessica Lindsay is our showrunner. Story editing by Veronica Simmons. Fabiola Melendez-Carletti is our coordinating producer. And Carla Hilton is our executive producer. Additional help was provided by Jim Williamson,

executive producer at the I-Unit. Katerina Germani with CBC Legal, producer Alison Cook, and Cecil Fernandez, executive producer at CBC Podcasts. Additional mixing by Evan Kelly. Additional research support by Dexter McMillan and Aloysius Wong. And voice coaching by Pippa Johnstone. Special thanks to the folks at CBC Podcasts for their support. Karen Burgess is managing editor for CBC News Podcasts.

support. Karen Burgess is Managing Editor for CBC News Podcasts. If this is your first time listening to Uncover, you should know that this very feed brings you high-caliber true crime all year round. My personal favorite is season 24, Hunting Warhead, which takes us into the darkest corners of the internet. It follows an international team working to rescue child abuse victims who could be anywhere in the world. And mine is season 26, The Outlaw Ocean. It takes us to a vast and lawless realm that's rarely seen and too big to police, the world's oceans. You can check both out right here in the Uncover feed.

For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.