S30 E4: Dogged by controversy | Bad Results

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Speaker 1 Be there at Chase Center on January 18th. Go to HarlemGlobetrotters.com for your tickets to the 100-year tour.

Speaker 6 This is a CBC podcast.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 On January 25th, 2017, people living on Canada's east coast in Newfoundland and Labrador tune into their local CBC Radio Drive Home show and hear this.

Speaker 2 Carol Reynolds-Boyce is a 55-year-old retired school teacher who lives in Wilmington, Delaware.

Speaker 2 She's got a Facebook page on which she claims she's the chief of the Beothic tribe of Newfoundland and North America Reservation Nation.

Speaker 2 Yes, the Beothic, said to be extinct since 1820, but very much alive, says Ms. Boyce.

Speaker 2 It's the stuff of fiction. The lone descendant of a long-lost people steps out of the shadows.

Speaker 7 When people think 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.

Speaker 7 Well, now I'm the voice and I'm speaking for my ancestors.

Speaker 2 Her proof?

Speaker 7 I took a DNA test for

Speaker 7 First Nation testing. They have DNA testing for all the tribes up in Canada, up in Ontario.

Speaker 2 And who did that testing?

Speaker 7 Via Guard, Acumetrix.

Speaker 2 The very next day, her story gets fact-checked. And questions about the DNA sample are front and center.
It infuriates me.

Speaker 8 Steve Carr is a geneticist at Memorial University who studies the beothics. Carr says no such test exists.

Speaker 9 Being able to assign any living person as being, yes, you're a beothic, that just can't be done.

Speaker 2 So how did Accumetrics 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.

Speaker 2 Not long after, the beothic references on the Accumetrics website vanish. But it wouldn't be the last time an indigenous ancestry test would catch the company out.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 5 Either Guillaume Carl is fucking around with the DNA results and or Accumetrik is fucking around with their results.

Speaker 2 And at the same time that this beothics story was blowing up, thousands of kilometers away, a woman named Sarah Domenico had her own questions about the company.

Speaker 2 And she would do something very few would try when burned by Accumetrics. She would take them to court.

Speaker 11 You're the company that's supposed to provide me with results. I was pissed.

Speaker 2 I'm Jorge Barrera. This is Bad Results, Chapter 4: Dog by Controversy.

Speaker 11 I was an independent woman, had a lucrative career, I was wild and free and young.

Speaker 2 The story of Sarah's court battle with Viaga Acumetrics begins in 2013. She's just ended a years-long, on-again, off-again relationship.

Speaker 2 She's hanging out in downtown Oakland when she sees this guy going by on his bicycle.

Speaker 11 And he just was the most beautiful man I'd ever seen. We both look at each other and it was just like

Speaker 11 eye contact. And I was just smitten and I really fell for this guy instantly.

Speaker 2 One thing leads to another with this guy and well, sparks fly. 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.

Speaker 2 It's a surprise, a good one. She's 36.

Speaker 11 It's when your biological clock starts to tick, you know.

Speaker 11 I was just excited that I was pregnant. I was happy that I was going to have a baby.

Speaker 2 But her calculations tell her that her ex, a guy she's calling Micah, also to protect his privacy, well, he is probably the dad. So she tells John she's pregnant and is going back to Micah.

Speaker 11 I just really wanted, more than anything to have my child have their father from day one. It's probably Micah

Speaker 11 and

Speaker 11 I moved forward with Micah as if it were his.

Speaker 2 But there's this nagging little worry. What if she's wrong? John is black.
Micah is white.

Speaker 11 I just kept having this, what if

Speaker 11 I would just never want to do that to somebody. I would never want somebody to catch the wrong baby that's not theirs and go through the whole process.

Speaker 11 That's why I wanted to get the test.

Speaker 2 When Sarah lands on the Accumetrics website, she's drawn to it.

Speaker 11 Lots of infographics, lots of information, very accessible.

Speaker 11 Just, it seemed as if they were completely legitimate.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 11 And I had called and talked to, I believe it was the owner Harvey Tenenbaum.

Speaker 11 How do you get samples from someone you're not ready to tell what's going on?

Speaker 2 Harvey tells her nail clippings. 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.

Speaker 2 She's now three months pregnant and desperate to know.

Speaker 11 I called several times, and I literally begged them to give me my results.

Speaker 2 And there is this one receptionist.

Speaker 11 She was so cruel. Every time I called, and it was like,

Speaker 11 lady, I'm pregnant. Can you be nice?

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 2 This goes on for six weeks, call after call, until finally Sarah gets an answer. According to Viagrad Ocumetrics, John is the biological dad.
Micah's results?

Speaker 11 Micah is inconclusive. And I was like, what does that mean?

Speaker 11 And she said, well, it's just inconclusive. And so I could send another sample in for Micah if I wanted to.
But I asked, why would I I send another sample in if John is positive?

Speaker 11 She said some people just want a definitive yes or no.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Micah is still in the dark about Sarah's doubts. She's now six months pregnant and still waiting for that yes or no.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 2 But the results from Micah's sample come back as inconclusive for a second time. So Sarah breaks the news to Micah.

Speaker 11 I told him that he

Speaker 11 was not the father,

Speaker 11 and

Speaker 11 he didn't believe me. And I vaguely remember sort of a fight about,

Speaker 11 you 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,

Speaker 11 I got the results. And I just believed that ViGuard Accumetrics had given me the solid information.
It never crossed my mind that, oh,

Speaker 11 I'm going to get the wrong, I'm going to get some false positives today.

Speaker 2 Sarah packs up her stuff and leaves the spacious apartment she shares with Micah.

Speaker 11 And so I moved

Speaker 11 in with John. And he's

Speaker 13 23-year-old bachelor.

Speaker 11 And so I cleaned as best I could and I would cook. And so I tried to make the best of that.

Speaker 2 John dotes on Sarah and his family embraces her.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 2 It's a first pregnancy for them both and together they plan a California birth.

Speaker 11 John and I had gone to pre-birthing classes and

Speaker 11 breathing and ecstatic birth and you know all these hippie-dippy sort of things. So I thought I was really prepared for birth.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 11 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,

Speaker 11 you know.

Speaker 2 John is there through the pain, the cursing. He also has a specific assignment.

Speaker 11 John caught our baby

Speaker 11 and

Speaker 11 just, I remember this, like looking at his hands, and

Speaker 11 it was darkly lit, but it's obvious. You know, it's obvious that when

Speaker 11 a big black man in his big, beautiful hands catches a white baby, it's pretty obvious.

Speaker 11 And it was just like, oh no,

Speaker 11 it broke him.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 11 And I tried to

Speaker 11 figure that out with Viaga Acumetrics. And the one thing that I didn't want to happen happened anyway.

Speaker 2 And once again, she's on the phone.

Speaker 11 Called Accumetrix sobbing, like,

Speaker 11 what's going on here?

Speaker 11 There's something wrong. She doesn't look like the baby you told me I was going to have.

Speaker 2 She keeps asking to speak with Harvey, but now Harvey is never around.

Speaker 11 I was scared and I wanted to talk to somebody besides the receptionist, the mean one. And she told me I had done this to myself.

Speaker 11 That's what she said. And it's like,

Speaker 11 yeah, that's true.

Speaker 11 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?

Speaker 2 So Sarah tells the receptionist, find me someone else to speak with.

Speaker 11 She transferred me to the lab technician named Kyle.

Speaker 11 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 and he would call me back.

Speaker 2 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 Acumetrics.

Speaker 11 I really want to take this to court because I don't want this to ever happen again.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 2 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 Accumetrics.

Speaker 2 10 months of paper sparring, the usual in civil litigation. She's seeking damages for the despair, frustration, and humiliation Accumetrix inflicted by its wrong results.
It's a big moment.

Speaker 2 Sarah's doing what no other victim has done, pursuing a case against Accumetrics. For its part, Accumetrics' filings say Sarah's got no case and it should be tossed.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 2 Accumetrics is here to settle. They put an offer on the table.
Sarah, though, she wants to go to trial. She's determined to put this company out of business.

Speaker 2 But inside the judge's chambers, she feels like she's the one on trial.

Speaker 11 Well, if you take it to a jury of your peers, they might not look at you as being so

Speaker 11 upright.

Speaker 11 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

Speaker 11 not a credible victim.

Speaker 11 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 a jury. So I ended up settling.

Speaker 2 Sarah signs on the dotted line, agreeing to Accumetric's terms, which means she can't disclose the financial details of the settlement.

Speaker 2 She didn't get the accountability she wanted, but at first, Sarah feels that the settlement is kind of a win.

Speaker 11 Daphne still felt vindicated because, obviously, I mean, in a settlement, they're not saying that they're guilty,

Speaker 11 but obviously they were willing to settle with a financial sum that

Speaker 11 kind of

Speaker 11 made it that they knew that they had done something wrong.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 It flattened everything she had gone through, turned all her emotions, from heartbreak to anger, into a single feeling, shame.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 11 I shouldn't have settled. I should have gone for it.
I should have just been like, you know what? I will take on

Speaker 11 all the

Speaker 11 jurors because my story is true. And

Speaker 11 my story should never happen to anyone else.

Speaker 2 But it does over and over again. People turning to Accumetrics and then later finding out the person named as the father is wrong.
The same pattern for years.

Speaker 2 In the end, Sarah's lawsuit didn't seem to make much of a dent in Accumetrics business.

Speaker 2 So it continued relatively unphased, branching out into different DNA markets both overseas and at home, including testing for indigenous ancestry.

Speaker 2 And that's when I got the call that pulled me onto Accumetrics trail.

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Speaker 7 October 13th, 2016 is when the DNA test came out.

Speaker 2 And who did that testing?

Speaker 7 ViaGuard, Accumetrics.

Speaker 2 The first time I I hear the name Acumetrics is while listening to this story about the woman who believed she was Beothic.

Speaker 2 It catches my attention because at the time I'd been reporting on stories about Pretendians or people pretending to be indigenous. And this Beathic story has some of those same hallmarks.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 They tell me the group is also using Accumetrics for Indigenous ancestry testing, and there's something off about it.

Speaker 2 The Confederation sells membership cards that the group claims give Indigenous status, granting cardholders the right to hunt, fish, and buy cars tax-free.

Speaker 2 But to get a card, you need to prove you're Indigenous. And one of the ways to do that is a DNA test, which is done by Accumetrics at a cost of $250 a pop.

Speaker 2 The company stands to make an awful lot of money.

Speaker 11 Thank you for calling our award-winning laboratory testing and research center. You are now being connected to a professional service representative.

Speaker 2 So I start making calls.

Speaker 11 DNA testing, how may we help you? Hi, my name is Gorgi Barrera. I'm a reporter with CBC.

Speaker 11 Wright, sir.

Speaker 14 So I did forward your message to the Wrights Department.

Speaker 14 He's gone for the day.

Speaker 16 You know, it's in you guys' interest to talk to me about this situation because it's sort of a big deal.

Speaker 2 But they don't want to talk.

Speaker 2 They bounce me to the leader of the Confederation of Aboriginal People. You're going to give me a number?

Speaker 11 Right. And that's who you're going to talk to.

Speaker 16 Okay. And what's his name again?

Speaker 11 Gren

Speaker 11 chief. Uh-huh.
Carly.

Speaker 2 It's actually pronounced Carl. All the work is done through him.

Speaker 17 All the work is done through him, sir.

Speaker 2 So I make that call.

Speaker 11 Hello. Hi.

Speaker 17 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 VioGuard acumetrics.
Yes.

Speaker 17 Do you trust their results?

Speaker 17 Absolutely. And I'll be very surprised if you can find anything illegal because they're quite squeaky clean, I gotta tell you.

Speaker 2 But some of Carl's ex-members, they're not so sure.

Speaker 18 I had doubts as far as Acumetric was concerned.

Speaker 2 Danielle Brabant is a former member of the Confederation. He heard rumors that there's something funny going on with the Accumetrics Indigenous DNA test.

Speaker 2 Things like multiple people getting eerily identical ancestry results. So he turns to his dog.
a French poodle named Molly.

Speaker 2 He swabs Molly the poodle, then he he puts the swab in a plastic bag, packs it up in a box, and sends it off to be tested by Accumetrics.

Speaker 18 The results came out about

Speaker 18 a month and a half, two months afterward.

Speaker 18 And my bitch has got a 5% Indian blood in her system.

Speaker 18 It's a giant poodle.

Speaker 18 So it's somehow doubtful.

Speaker 2 Yup, according to Accumetrics results, Molly the poodle has indigenous ancestry. So I call Accumetrics back.

Speaker 2 Hello?

Speaker 2 Can I get the runaround again?

Speaker 14 Yep. Sir, Doctor,

Speaker 14 he's gone for the day.

Speaker 17 Okay, well, I mean, the issue is that two people separately submitted DNA samples to Viaguard directly, and they received results that they had Native American ancestry, but they actually sent DNA samples from their dogs.

Speaker 17 So I need to speak with Mr. Tenenbaum about this because he's the company owner, right?

Speaker 14 Yeah, okay, so I'm going to relay the message.

Speaker 2 CBC News reporting torpedoes Grand Chief Carl's group. He's eventually charged with fraud for selling those fake indigenous status cards.

Speaker 2 Around the same time, he was also convicted for sex crimes involving a minor, but that case is unrelated to this DNA testing investigation.

Speaker 2 Carl is still facing trial on the fraud charges. But what about Harvey and Accumetrics responsibility for the Indigenous ancestry testing? When I approach them, the company refuses interview requests.

Speaker 2 They send a statement in an email. It basically says these Indigenous ancestry tests have no legal value anyway.

Speaker 2 and they blame the messed up results on the customers who they say probably contaminated the samples. It's Accumetrics go-to explanation.

Speaker 2 They stop offering the indigenous DNA testing, but they're still in the dog DNA testing business and dogs keep tripping Accumetrics up.

Speaker 4 We are 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.

Speaker 2 CBC's Consumer affairs show Marketplace is testing dog breed DNA companies. It's now March 2023 and one of the four companies tested is Viaga Acumetrics.

Speaker 2 Marketplace sends in DNA samples from three dogs for testing, but it also sends a sample from a human.

Speaker 2 The show's host, Travis Danraj, pretending it's from a dog.

Speaker 4 The fourth dog, it's me.

Speaker 2 The Danraj sample should come back as a failed test, but the Accumetrics result?

Speaker 5 I'm a Shepherd!

Speaker 11 No, kidding.

Speaker 2 Accumetrics tripped up by a dog again.

Speaker 2 The Marketplace investigation exposes clear issues with the company's DNA testing services. You see, Accumetrics also asks CBC for either a picture of the dog or its suspected breed.

Speaker 2 So CBC says, Shepherd.

Speaker 2 Marketplace asks Accumetrics about Travis's result.

Speaker 4 Accumetrics said said it was likely sample ID numbers that were mixed up, while DNA might be done.

Speaker 2 But these issues, they'd been noticed by people who worked inside the company.

Speaker 19 Let's say for doggy DNA testing.

Speaker 2 We saw it being done without any equipment.

Speaker 2 People like Samantha Friday, who worked at Accumetrics, she told my colleague Rachel that she had suspicions about this particular type of test.

Speaker 12 What does that mean you saw it being done?

Speaker 19 Irrelevant information being asked

Speaker 19 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 Doggy's name so I can put it on his certificate.

Speaker 2 So what Sam is suggesting here is that Accumetrics uses customer information. not actual DNA to come up with its results.

Speaker 2 But if we want to confirm this, to get direct answers about what is happening inside the lab, we need to get to Harvey.

Speaker 2 Yet every time we feel like we're getting closer to him, closer to the truth, he slips away.

Speaker 11 All the work is done through him. All the work is done through him, sir.

Speaker 17 And Mr. Tenbaugh, can you hear me? No, he's not here, sir.
That's just somebody that lasts for the day.

Speaker 2 That's as close as I get to him. A voice in the background.

Speaker 15 All the work is done through him.

Speaker 2 So Rachel and I come up with a plan.

Speaker 12 And that plan is going to take me a little out of my comfort zone.

Speaker 11 There we go.

Speaker 12 I've got a hidden camera and I'm taking our questions directly to Harvey. Yeah, the stakes seem pretty high.

Speaker 15 You're going to get an abortion, but what if it's the wrong guy name? You're born your child of the

Speaker 15 wrong person.

Speaker 12 Yeah,

Speaker 12 I can't imagine that.

Speaker 15 Well, you can imagine everything happens in life.

Speaker 12 And then I get a surprise call.

Speaker 10 I have full knowledge of how the company operates and what they're doing. That's why I'm asking to be completely anonymous.
I don't want this getting back to me somehow.

Speaker 12 That's next time on bad results.

Speaker 2 A legal note here. Over the course of this podcast, you're going to hear a number of allegations made against ViGuard, Acumetrics, and its employees.

Speaker 2 When asked, company owner Harvey Tenenbaum said he stands by the test and that any errors were caused by customers during sample collection.

Speaker 2 Bad Results is written and reported by Rachel Houlihan and me, Jorge Barrera. Mixing and Producing by AC Rowe.
Jessica Lindsay is our showrunner and Carla Hilton is our executive producer.

Speaker 2 Special thanks to the folks at CBC Podcasts for their support. Karen Burgess is managing editor for CBC News Podcasts.

Speaker 6 For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca/slash podcasts.