Some day, when everyone responsible is out of politics, can no longer be criminally charged, or is dead, we will get a full financial accounting of just how much fraud and waste there was in our response to the coronavirus pandemic. I was reminded of that this weekend while reading a report from ProPublica and The Nevada Independent on a COVID testing contractor that returned results that were 96% INACCURATE.
That company was Northshore Clinical Labs of Chicago. Thanks to political connections in Nevada, Northshore was able to fast-track their license application to do testing in that state and won lucrative contracts with the state itself, large school districts, universities, and counties to provide testing services that would be relied upon to meet a number of new mandates. All of this guaranteed business for a company that had been doing COVID testing for just a couple of months.
And speaking of the company, its leadership came with a criminal track record of fraud. Brothers Hirsch and Guarav Mahindra had black marks on their records for taking part in fraudulent debt collection schemes–where they browbeat people into paying debts they didn’t even owe–and mortgage fraud as well. When they bought out Northshore Clinical Labs in July of 2020, they listed their mother as the “president” of the company. A third “executive” of Northshore, Omar Hussain, was also heavily fined in an separate debt-collection scam. Yet this motley crew was able to convince Nevada officials that they were running a legitimate clinical testing operation.
However, as the report points out, Northshore openly shared their plan to defraud the federal government and private insurance companies AS PART OF THEIR PROPOSAL TO THE STATE OF THE NEVADA. Northshore promised that all tests would be free, even if those getting tested were not eligible for free testing. They stated–again in documents provided in their proposals–that all test subjects would be told to check a box on their registration form stating they had been exposed to a positive case. That would meet the insurance requirements for having their test covered by their carrier. But as a backup, in case insurers caught on to the scam, the tests would then be submitted to the federal government fund to pay for uninsured test recipients. Their workaround was to claim that those tested “failed to provide insurance information”. Northshore’s scammers were going to get their money regardless–and who was going to complain because the “customers” never had to fork over any money?
But then the tests started coming back and the results of the rapid tests and the PCR tests weren’t matching up–with the “more accurate” PCR test almost always coming back negative–even for those that had tested positive in the rapid test. So you can imaging all of these people that got back the “more accurate” negative actually being positive and spreading COVID to more people that came in for inaccurate tests. When concerns about the accuracy of Northshore’s tests were finally shared with government officials who cared, it was found that the results showed discrepancies 96% of the time–and independent testing done on the same people found them almost always to be positive for COVID.
Northshore’s first reaction was to just drop PCR testing–leaving all of its customers in the lurch. But then their own employees started getting sick and they couldn’t staff their “clinics” to do rapid testing anymore–so they just packed up and left. But not before collecting millions of dollars in taxpayer money for fraudulent tests. And I should add, they were only licensed to operate one testing facility in Nevada–but opened dozens because no one was actually checking on them. Attempts to reach anyone involved in the company by the reporters with ProPublica were never answered using the phone numbers listed on the company’s websites.
Now if this sounds sort of familiar, you may remember the Center for Covid Control, which operated a testing facility in Darboy during the height of the Delta variant wave. Interestingly enough, they too are a Chicago-area company “founded” by Aleya Siyaj in 2020 and offering services very shortly after that–setting up shop in strip malls (as in Darboy) or in glorified portable sheds on vacant lots in places like Chicago and Minneapolis.
The Darboy site closed up after we started getting complaints from people that they were not getting their results back in the 24-hours that were promised, that workers were not properly equipped, and that customers were not be separated properly inside the facility. A report by the USA Today also cast doubt on the accuracy of the test results as the “lab” the company claimed to use to process them is the same address as their “corporate offices”–which are located in a business park. Again, the phone numbers listed on the company website do not ever get answered.
The USA Today report notes how the Center for Covid Control got so many customers, despite its questionable business practices: They used search engine optimization to always pop up first in the “Just enter ‘COVID test near me’ in the Google search bar” comment from President Joe Biden in an address to the nation in December of last year on getting more people tested for Delta and Omicron. For CCC, it was literally “Tell ’em Joe sent ya!”
For some reason, I don’t think Northshore Clinical Labs and the Center for Covid Control are isolated cases. The vast amounts of money committed to “getting everyone tested” provided far too lucrative a situation for just two sets of scammers to enter the market. But as with all things involving government fraud, it will be years–and probably decades–before we are privy to just how much was lost.
And that was just revenue from fraudulent Covid testing. Just wait until we dig down into the false claims of extended unemployment benefits, Paycheck Protection Program loans given to non-existent companies, and stimulus checks sent out to people that only exist on paper to execute other scams. Those numbers will dwarf the Covid test scammers. Hopefully the full audit won’t embarrass the political party in charge at the time its completed so the Government Disinformation Board will allow it to be released to the public.
