S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results

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Speaker 3 This is a CBC podcast.

Speaker 5 It's September 17th, 2024, and I've just arrived at the U.S.

Speaker 8 Federal Courthouse in White Plains, New York.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 6 Kyle Sui.

Speaker 6 Right. To be honest, uh,

Speaker 13 we have a lab looking into the issue. We're not sure

Speaker 13 what went wrong or what the issue is in this scenario.

Speaker 14 Rachel and I have heard a lot about about Kyle through our investigation.

Speaker 17 He's the voice on the other end as Kodal and her mom try to get answers over the telephone from Accumetrics.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 5 From 2013 until at least 2020, Kyle was the technical manager at Accumetrics overseeing sample collection.

Speaker 20 You did the test, Kyle?

Speaker 14 Correct.

Speaker 3 And the testing is 99.99% accurate.

Speaker 21 And it turns out he also had a side hustle, allergy testingcompany.com.

Speaker 5 It offered hair analysis testing for over 800 potential food and environmental sensitivities.

Speaker 18 Everything from egg yolk to swine urine protein to formaldehyde.

Speaker 16 Thing is, it wasn't exactly on the up and up, and it caught the attention of United States Postal Inspection Service agents. agents.

Speaker 9 Kahl was arrested while on vacation in Madrid in 2023 and charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of frauds and swindles.

Speaker 24 And when he was extradited to the U.S., he pleaded guilty and provided all the details of his crimes to the court.

Speaker 25 Here's an actor reading from that transcript.

Speaker 26 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 e-commerce store.

Speaker 18 Customers sent their hair samples to a rented mailbox in a town just north of New York City.

Speaker 10 Over the course of several months, Kyle took in about 6 million US dollars from more than 88,000 people.

Speaker 26 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.

Speaker 11 There was no test.

Speaker 16 He simply tossed the samples in the garbage.

Speaker 26 I knew that my conduct was wrong and illegal.

Speaker 25 After his plea, Kyle went back to jail to await sentencing.

Speaker 11 And that's why I'm here at this courthouse.

Speaker 5 Today will mean justice for victims of Kyle's hair testing scam.

Speaker 16 But for Koral 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 Viaga Acumetrics.

Speaker 31 You're receiving the definitive answer of the paternity of the fetus.

Speaker 32 Obviously, legit. It's a DNA company.

Speaker 33 I was pissed. I trusted those results.

Speaker 31 Doesn't look like the baby you told me I was going to have.

Speaker 34 It's devastating.

Speaker 32 Some fucked up nightmare.

Speaker 33 What do you mean he's not my son?

Speaker 34 It was like a death.

Speaker 30 Test was not that accurate.

Speaker 16 And the man with those answers, the company's owner.

Speaker 35 My name is Harvey Tennenbaum.

Speaker 16 He remains far away from any courtroom.

Speaker 35 For Viaguard

Speaker 25 I'm Jorge Breira.

Speaker 7 This is Bad Results, Chapter 6, Travesty.

Speaker 36 Lab testing. Dr.
Harvey, please. Speaking.

Speaker 36 Kyle's guilty plea opens another door in our investigation.

Speaker 25 So I call Accumetrics, hoping to talk to Harvey about him. To my surprise, Harvey picks up.

Speaker 36 Hello, Dr. Harvey Tennenbaum.
It's Jorge Brere.

Speaker 25 You see, we've heard from a former Accumetrics employee who alleges he saw Kyle tossing prenatal paternity samples into the garbage.

Speaker 13 I saw Kyle just throwing it in the trash outside.

Speaker 25 So I put it to Harvey. Did Kyle throw out samples while working at Acumetrics?

Speaker 36 Because we know and I know that Kyle was working for you when he started this side, this business, right?

Speaker 36 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.

Speaker 37 No.

Speaker 37 Because no.

Speaker 26 The answer to that is no. But send it in writing and I'll research it and check it it out for you.
Listen, send it in. If it's appropriate, you'll get an answer, okay?

Speaker 28 Another surprise.

Speaker 16 Harvey actually answers the email I send.

Speaker 19 It's the one and only time he'll respond to any of our emailed questions.

Speaker 17 And in that email, Harvey says that Kyle's no longer an employee.

Speaker 16 He says he doesn't know anything about Kyle's U.S. case and won't comment any further.

Speaker 21 But we still have questions for him about the fingerprick tests, about whether samples were tossed, about his, Harvey's, scientific credentials.

Speaker 23 We wrote long emails detailing all the allegations we'd gathered and we sent those to both Harvey and his lawyers.

Speaker 16 They all went unanswered.

Speaker 18 So we figure out a new plan to put this all to Harvey in person.

Speaker 16 to try something that in our business is called a junk.

Speaker 34 When was the last time it even snowed and it's got a snow today?

Speaker 2 Yeah. I don't know.

Speaker 21 You guys never get snow.

Speaker 25 Freaking tropics down here.

Speaker 18 It's late March 2024, a couple months after Kyle's guilty plea.

Speaker 11 Rachel and I are parked with a good view of the back door to the Acumetrics lab.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 34 And now we just wait.

Speaker 16 We wait a bit, and then he emerges.

Speaker 4 Harvey's 91 now and walking with a bit of a stoop shuffle through the falling snow.

Speaker 38 Dr. Harvey Tenenbaum, hey.

Speaker 39 How are you? I'm Jorge Barrera.

Speaker 40 I'm a journalist with CBC.

Speaker 38 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 creed.

Speaker 20 And all

Speaker 33 these thousands of tests.

Speaker 27 And half the errors are the collection problem.

Speaker 30 What's up?

Speaker 14 Give me a call tomorrow.

Speaker 39 Why don't we go in and talk about this?

Speaker 38 I can't talk to you right now.

Speaker 12 Because I know that you knew these tests were flawed, but you still kept selling them.

Speaker 41 Tests were never flawed.

Speaker 27 The tests are accurate.

Speaker 7 The tests are perfect, he says. Accurate.

Speaker 23 It's the fault of the customers.

Speaker 29 It's the cross-contamination.

Speaker 29 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.

Speaker 29 Harvey told Rachel and Hidden Camera they'd stop offering the prenatal paternity test because the test was, quote, not that accurate.

Speaker 12 Well, when do you still do prenatal paternity tests?

Speaker 27 No.

Speaker 22 When did you stop doing that?

Speaker 3 Years ago.

Speaker 39 Like, how, when? Because we have evidence from 2020, 2021.

Speaker 20 Well, that might have been the last test.

Speaker 41 Yeah?

Speaker 12 And why did you stop them?

Speaker 41 Couldn't get the reagents at the right price.

Speaker 14 I don't know if you caught that word, reagents.

Speaker 16 It's a substance used in DNA testing to trigger a chemical reaction.

Speaker 23 So he's telling me that the company didn't pull the tests because they got the results wrong, but because they got too expensive to run.

Speaker 8 We haven't heard that one before.

Speaker 10 I keep prodding for answers as Harvey gets into the driver's seat of his car.

Speaker 38 There's dozens of lives that have been upended by these tests. They believed in you.
They believed what you said, that your tests were ironclad.

Speaker 41 But you have to call me tomorrow.

Speaker 28 Excuse me.

Speaker 12 Okay, so we can come in and we can sit down and talk.

Speaker 41 Don't come in until you call. Okay.

Speaker 20 Which will do?

Speaker 20 All right.

Speaker 29 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.

Speaker 29 Calling

Speaker 38 Bioguard Accumetrics.

Speaker 11 So we take Harvey at his word and call Accumetrics the next day.

Speaker 11 DNA testing, fingerprinting, how may I help you?

Speaker 22 Good morning.

Speaker 38 Dr. Harvey Tenenbaum, please.
What is this regarding?

Speaker 40 This is Jorge Barrera from CBC.

Speaker 38 We spoke yesterday and he told me to call him today to set up.

Speaker 38 He's not interested in talking to anybody.

Speaker 42 He doesn't know anything.

Speaker 38 He doesn't know anything about

Speaker 38 nothing to do with him personally.

Speaker 14 Jorge, are you listening? I am listening.

Speaker 38 This is harassment okay he will call the police next time you try this okay but there's there's a lot of victims here

Speaker 36 so we try another route and call one of his lawyers well then you can speak to him

Speaker 38 can't talk to me about it you can 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 he doesn't want to explain it then that's his prerogative sure but it's not my prerogative to

Speaker 38 but it's your

Speaker 38 but it's your dad and we're about to air stuff about this and I think

Speaker 39 at the time this lawyer one of Accumetrics lawyers is Harvey Tenenbaum's son Sheldon Tenenbaum.

Speaker 42 That's something you have to discuss with him though.

Speaker 38 I know but you're maybe you can help convince him that it's in his best interest to sit down and talk to us about this.

Speaker 42 Ask him if he wants to make a comment and otherwise that's as far as I can.

Speaker 38 Because we're talking probably a decade of lives completely upended by these wrong prenatal paternity tests.

Speaker 38 And we've spoken to experts who say that the instances of false positives that Weiger delivered, almost impossible. Same with false negatives.

Speaker 38 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.

Speaker 38 These are real people who lose a child, gain a child.

Speaker 42 Now, I'm really not interested in discussing it further. I've made it clear to you that as a lawyer, I can only discuss what my client allows me to do.

Speaker 42 And it's not my job to get you a story, okay?

Speaker 38 If you want to speak to him directly, we have the story.

Speaker 7 We didn't need Sheldon's help to get us a story.

Speaker 29 We'd been chasing one for months with all these different threads.

Speaker 10 And that's how I ended up here at a federal courthouse in White Plains, New York, for the sentencing of Kyle Sui.

Speaker 44 You'd never think it's going to be in your small town. It's going to be someone you know on a missing poster.

Speaker 34 Truer Crime Podcast is back.

Speaker 45 And this season, every story has something in common. It's not what it seems.

Speaker 12 There's word tonight of a prison riot.

Speaker 2 Come on, stop.

Speaker 45 From Molly Tibbetts to the Menendez brothers, this season, we're exploring what the headlines missed and the people they left behind.

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Speaker 46 Hello, can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you.

Speaker 4 It's just after 3 p.m., September 17th, 2024.

Speaker 16 I'm standing at the bottom of the courthouse steps.

Speaker 10 The judge has handed down Kyle's sentence, and I'm calling Rachel to tell her what happened.

Speaker 46 Like, what did he look like? What was his demeanor? Kyle walked in, his head shaved, wearing

Speaker 46 Hudson Correctional Center greens, looked at his family, gave a quick little thumbs up before it all started.

Speaker 46 They were really quiet throughout, barely moved throughout the whole hearing, listening intently.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 46 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 prosecutor and the judge talked about the victims and what they were purchasing.

Speaker 46 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 um a 10-year-old and a nine-year-old and the judge at one point actually said you imagine someone with a nine-year-old child that you know does this test and they send it to your company and you they get back a report saying bunk results and something terrible happens to the child.

Speaker 46 How would you feel if that was your child? So that was the

Speaker 46 clincher for the judge.

Speaker 12 In the end, the judge sides with the prosecution.

Speaker 18 Kyle is sentenced to 41 months.

Speaker 18 Sitting through the rehashing of Kyle's crime during the sentencing hearing, I'm struck by the familiar ring of the details.

Speaker 4 The mail order testing kits, samples tossed in the trash. It matches a similar pattern that's emerged in our investigation of acumetrics.

Speaker 16 The company advertised it had offices in places like New York City and London, UK, but they were really just P.O.

Speaker 22 boxes, like in Kyle's hair testing scam.

Speaker 21 I search out Kyle's lawyer.

Speaker 47 So first, how do I say your last name?

Speaker 48 Lickman.

Speaker 14 Lickman.

Speaker 24 Jeffrey Lickman is the real deal, a top New York City criminal lawyer.

Speaker 12 Client list includes John Gotti Jr., El Chapo, and P.

Speaker 8 Diddy's kid, Justin Combs.

Speaker 48 We've heard about it.

Speaker 48 We understand there's been an investigation. Nothing's come of it.
And yeah, nothing has come of it.

Speaker 49 And who did the investigation in Accumetrics?

Speaker 47 It was in Toronto. It was in Canada.
Oh, like like Toronto Police was into it and they just didn't.

Speaker 48 We don't know what their decision is or if they're even done with their investigation, but we know we haven't heard back from them.

Speaker 48 We've spoken to them and they know we exist and we're prepared to speak to them about it if

Speaker 33 they desire.

Speaker 12 This is news to us. We know Coddal 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.

Speaker 12 She was told by the North Bay cops to maybe try the Ontario Provincial Police.

Speaker 37 Kudal got nowhere.

Speaker 11 Rachel and I called as well.

Speaker 2 All dead ends.

Speaker 16 But now Kyle's lawyer is saying there might be an investigation.

Speaker 24 So armed with this new information, we reach out to the Toronto Police again and they give us an official statement.

Speaker 11 There's nothing about an acumetrics investigation in their system.

Speaker 21 What started out as a promising lead goes cold.

Speaker 12 The authorities don't seem to be that interested in acumetrics.

Speaker 32 I think this year it has to be the year we need to stop them.

Speaker 11 Taking legal action against acumetrics comes up a lot amongst the members of Coral's Facebook group.

Speaker 43 I agree.

Speaker 32 I'm actually going to call my lawyer right after this.

Speaker 47 I'm going to met his mind.

Speaker 50 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 most attorneys aren't looking to

Speaker 5 consumer prenatal paternity test acumetrics 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.

Speaker 5 From the moment someone realizes the prenatal paternity test named the wrong dad, the legal clock starts ticking to file a claim.

Speaker 16 But those two years can pass in a blink in the midst of emotional turmoil.

Speaker 12 The California mother, Sarah Domenico, she managed to sue Accumetrix but only because she filed her claim exactly two years to the day after her daughter's birth.

Speaker 24 This is why Codal and her Facebook group reached out to us in the first place.

Speaker 28 Right now, our investigation is the only way for them to get answers.

Speaker 24 For the vast majority of them, including Codal, it's likely too late to sue.

Speaker 12 It's been four years since Codal sent her first DNA test samples to Accumetrix.

Speaker 23 Four years since that first gender reveal party.

Speaker 4 Kodal was just a teenager then.

Speaker 18 waiting on prenatal paternity test results from Accumetrics.

Speaker 29 Good job, Arlo.

Speaker 9 Today, things are different in Kodal's life.

Speaker 5 In a video shot this summer, her daughter Harlo holds a water gun. On cue, she pulls the trigger.

Speaker 21 Blue dye shoots out.

Speaker 39 Kodal is pregnant again. It's a boy!

Speaker 5 Standing next to her is the baby's father, and when Harlow sprays him with blue dye, he laughs.

Speaker 27 This man is helping raise four-year-old Harlow, and their life is pretty settled.

Speaker 16 But all these years later, Kodal is still simply trying to fix the paperwork.

Speaker 32 The man that is listed on my daughter's birth certificate is the person that Viaga told me was the father

Speaker 32 back when I was pregnant. So he's still on there now to this day.

Speaker 32 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.

Speaker 32 It's a reminder of the whole situation that did happen with FireGuard.

Speaker 25 Like Codal, John Brennan is still trying to come to terms with what happened to his family.

Speaker 5 The devastation of finding out he had no biological connection to the baby he'd raised for eight months.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 33 I'm not like a feelings kind of guy. I don't know how to, you know, know, I don't know how to navigate through these

Speaker 33 feelings.

Speaker 33 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

Speaker 2 and I'm

Speaker 2 alone.

Speaker 2 Just me drinking and trying to

Speaker 33 cope the only way that I know how.

Speaker 33 I mean, a year of my life just on the road alone

Speaker 33 with nothing but my thoughts.

Speaker 33 Really, really, really difficult time of my life to try to

Speaker 33 tackle as a 22-year-old kid.

Speaker 39 His friend Delano tried to help.

Speaker 51 He was lost. Like he was lost.

Speaker 51 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.

Speaker 51 Yeah, so he was like vanishing slowly, just disappearing from us.

Speaker 33 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... It was a scam.
The whole thing was fake.

Speaker 33 And so I've always been of the mindset that I'm never going to have kids again.

Speaker 33 I thought about getting a vasectomy very shortly after this because I'm like, there's no way I'm going through this again.

Speaker 23 He didn't go through with the operation.

Speaker 11 Eventually, he found love again.

Speaker 6 He's engaged now and imagines a family.

Speaker 33 Where I'm at right now in life, you know, 30 years old, things are different now. And I,

Speaker 33 you know, I've come.

Speaker 33 you know, come to a much better place mentally and

Speaker 33 in an extremely healthy relationship with someone that I love and

Speaker 33 it's good to kind of have that

Speaker 33 that like

Speaker 33 that feeling of positivity that this isn't this isn't how it has to be like I can I can have a kid one day

Speaker 10 but he remains permanently marked from his first time as a parent in more ways than one

Speaker 33 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 arms. So that's what I did.

Speaker 8 The baby's name, Travis, in large cursive script on the inside of his right bicep.

Speaker 12 Years later, after John had time to process what he'd lost, all that happened.

Speaker 23 He got the tattoo updated.

Speaker 9 Now,

Speaker 38 it says Travesty.

Speaker 33 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'd just say, it says travesty.

Speaker 33 And yeah, I hope to not have to get into the whole story, but occasionally, I kind of do. You know,

Speaker 33 it's not an easy story to tell.

Speaker 11 Bad Results is written and reported by by me, Jorge Barrera.

Speaker 34 And me, Rachel Houlihan. Mixing and producing by AC Rowe.
Jessica Lindsay is our showrunner. Story editing by Veronica Simmons.

Speaker 28 Fabiola Melendez-Carletti is our coordinating producer.

Speaker 23 And Carla Hilton is our executive producer.

Speaker 34 Additional help was provided by Jim Williamson, executive producer at the iUnit. Katarina Germany with CBC Legal, producer Allison Cook, and Cecil Fernandez, executive producer at CBC Podcasts.

Speaker 5 Additional mixing by Evan Kelly.

Speaker 25 Additional research support by Dexter McMillan and Aloysius Wong.

Speaker 5 And voice coaching by Pippa Johnstone.

Speaker 34 Special thanks to the folks at CBC Podcasts for their support. Karen Burgess is managing editor for CBC News Podcasts.

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