Jorge Barrera
Appearances
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
Which is how could Al and her mother Michelle end up on the phone with Acumetrix? They don't understand what is happening. All these tests, all these conflicting results.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
Cadell's mom, Michelle, shares her frustration.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
Kodal's baby is now six months old, and Kodal is back where she started.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
So she calls up the first guy again, the one her gut told her was the dad, asks him to do another test, but with a different company. These results say he is the dad, but he's a bit wary and doesn't totally trust these new results. He wants yet another test. So they do one more. 14 months and 5 paternity tests with 3 different companies later, they finally have an answer.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
This man, the first man Kodal tested with, he's the father. And all the emotions that have swamped Kodal throughout all of this, well, they all harden into one. Anger.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
The receptionist says something about having to go through boxes of files to find Cadell's case.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
Coral and her mom, Michelle, don't know it yet. But the guy they're talking to is Kyle Sui. As far as we've been able to work out, Kyle is the second in command at Acumetrix. He's the technical manager. He oversees quality control for sample collection.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
After the refund, Acumetrix closes the file, moves on. But not Coudal.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
So Cadell starts digging into Acumetrix and comes across reviews that weren't online when she first looked up the company two years earlier. And she finds a connection she hadn't seen before. Prenatal Paternities Inc. and Viagard Acumetrix, they're the same company. And she discovers something else. She's not alone.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
Kodal helps set up a Facebook page for people burned by the laboratory's prenatal paternity tests. And it grows quickly.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
Dozens join, like this woman from Guatemala.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
There's a couple from Victoria who almost had an abortion after an Acumetrix test.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
And there's a woman from Montreal. She finds out when her son is six years old that Accumetrix got his biological dad wrong.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
And John Brennan, the man who raised a baby boy for eight months before learning the results of his tests were wrong, he finds his way to the group as well.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
In January 2021, Kodal and her Facebook group reach out to me.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
When I finally get the chance to drop in on one of their regular group calls, there are people on the line from at least three different U.S. states, a couple from Central America and Kodal.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
And their group, it just keeps growing.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
The manager doesn't call. But what Cadell doesn't know yet is that other people, many others, have called this company asking the same questions, looking for the same answers, for years.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
And for this group of people who have lost so much, finding others in the same position fuels more than just a sense of solidarity.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
Corral also has questions about the company itself and the people it hires.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
They're the questions that both Rachel and I share.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
That's all coming up on Bad Results. A legal note here. Over the course of this podcast, you're going to hear a number of allegations made against Vygarde Acumetrix and its employees. When asked, company owner Harvey Tenenbaum said he stands by the tests and that any errors were caused by customers during sample collection.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
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. Special thanks to the folks at CBC Podcasts for their support. Karen Burgess is managing editor for CBC News Podcasts.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
And they're not victims of random bad luck. There was nothing random about it. I'm Jorge Barrera. This is Bad Results, Chapter 2. Who's the father?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
This all started for Coral when she was 19, living the life of a college kid studying broadcasting in North Bay, Ontario, a small city on the shores of Lake Nipissing. She had her own place, worked at a pizza joint, was into photography and filmmaking, which explains the videos you've been hearing. What's up, world? For Codal, they're a bit like diary entries.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
In them, she looks like a blue-eyed Maisie Williams. You know, Arya Stark from Game of Thrones? Brown hair, round face, with a delicate gold-hooped nose ring. And, how she tells it, her life back then, it was a little wild.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
So when she started feeling a little off in July 2019 while working the night shift at the pizza joint, she had a suspicion.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
Kudal is pregnant, and her gut tells her it's this one guy.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
But she can't just trust her gut. She needs to be sure.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
In 2019, Viagra Documetrics is offering a full slate of lab services. Fingerprinting, pardons and waivers, drug testing, and of course, DNA paternity testing. Cadell finds them on the eastern edge of Toronto, wedged between a hair salon and a Montessori school.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
Corral is ushered in. There's a lot going on in her head. She remembers an elderly man taking her for the blood draw. She doesn't know his name, but in time, it will become a name she'll never forget.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
In his white lab coat, he squeezes drops from her pinky finger to put into a vial.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
Kodal pays the bill, $400 up front, and she'll need to pay $400 more when she gets the results. But while driving away, Acumetrix phones back and says they didn't get enough of her blood. They say they'll send her a home test kit. And when it arrives, the envelope reads Prenatal Paternities, Inc., Coral doesn't think much of it at the time.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
She doesn't yet know that it's the name of the company that got John Brennan's test results wrong four years earlier.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
But right now, here in her bathroom, Coral just wants to get this done.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
She's with three friends, filming the blood extraction for a school project about her pregnancy.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
One of her friends pricks Caudal's finger and squeezes blood from it into a little vial.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
Later that day, the man she believes is the father comes over to give his DNA sample for testing. He swabs his cheek.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
She puts her blood and his DNA in a box, tapes it up.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
Well, both prenatal and... This is cell phone video recorded by a young woman named Coral Mayer. She and her mother, Michelle Renaud, are calling a company called Viagard Acumetrics. Michelle takes the lead.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
A couple of weeks pass. Then Kodal gets the call she's been waiting for.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
Karel is now 14 weeks pregnant, and Acumetrix has just told her that the man she hoped was the dad isn't.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
She needs to arrange a DNA test with another man. She takes a deep breath and makes the call.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
He agrees. But there will be nothing foolproof about the answers she's about to get.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
Kodal's gender reveal party happens on a warm October day.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
She's wearing sandals, her belly a growing bump under a coral dress.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
Her brother Jaden is behind the camera and the lens focuses on Kodal standing alone, a smoke flare in her hand. She lights the flare and smoke billows out in a cloud of pink.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
This is a rare moment for Coral. Everyone here knows what she's going through, that she still doesn't know who the dad is, and that she's waiting on results from a second DNA test. But for one afternoon, they can all just relax a little, celebrate. A couple weeks later, she gets the results from the second DNA test. Over the phone, an Acumetrix rep tells her this guy, he's the father.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
But this man does little more than send emojis. He leaves Kodal mostly alone to face her pregnancy.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
Karel records this in her bathroom. Her eyes are red, her face drained of colour. The dad-to-be shows up for only one ultrasound when Qaral is seven months pregnant. She phones him later, after the appointment.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
When baby Harlow was born on March 7th, he's not there.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
Two paternity test results from the same lab. The prenatal paternity test result says he's the baby's dad. The postnatal paternity result says he's not.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results
When I spoke to him, he told me he'd always wanted a second test. That when he held Harlow for the first time, shortly after her birth, he said he felt sure at that moment she wasn't his daughter. For her part, Codal is exhausted. She doesn't need another fight, but they go back to Acumetrix, which offers them a postnatal paternity test.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E1: The “Fake Baby” | Bad Results
We're both journalists with the CBC News Investigative Unit.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E1: The “Fake Baby” | Bad Results
This is a story about people who put their faith in a laboratory that promised the definitive answer to a very important question. People who would later learn the answer was not definitive at all.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E1: The “Fake Baby” | Bad Results
A pattern that messed with people's fates, triggering court cases, destroying families, and rupturing lives.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E1: The “Fake Baby” | Bad Results
A few years after realizing his paternity results were wrong, John stumbles across a Facebook group. And that's when he finds out he's not alone.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E1: The “Fake Baby” | Bad Results
It's run by a 91-year-old racehorse aficionado.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E1: The “Fake Baby” | Bad Results
A self-described scientist who promised a DNA test with 99.9% accuracy.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E1: The “Fake Baby” | Bad Results
There'd be confrontations. Jorge, are you listening? I am listening. We will call the police. Okay, but there's a lot of victims here.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E1: The “Fake Baby” | Bad Results
All of this unfolding right under the noses of regulators and police at a lab that is still selling DNA services to this day.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E1: The “Fake Baby” | Bad Results
Remember this era? You are not the father.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E1: The “Fake Baby” | Bad Results
Those Maury Povich show episodes were some of the most brutal. The wild emotion, the public shaming, the actual fistfights.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E1: The “Fake Baby” | Bad Results
This story we're about to tell you is also about paternity tests. But these tests, they're not done for TV ratings.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
Taking legal action against Acumetrix comes up a lot amongst the members of Coral's Facebook group.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
For the vast majority of them, including Codal, it's likely too late to sue. It's been four years since Kodal sent her first DNA test samples to Acumetrix. Four years since that first gender reveal party. Kodal was just a teenager then, waiting on prenatal paternity test results from Acumetrix. Today, things are different in Kodal's life.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
In a video shot this summer, her daughter Harlow holds a water gun. On cue, she pulls the trigger. Blue dye shoots out. Kodal is pregnant again.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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, Kodal is still simply trying to fix the paperwork.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
Like Caudill, 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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
He didn't go through with the operation. Eventually, he found love again. He's engaged now and imagines a family.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
But he remains permanently marked from his first time as a parent in more ways than one.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
Bad Results is written and reported by me, Jorge Barrera.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
Fabiola Melendez-Carletti is our coordinating producer. And Carla Hilton is our executive producer.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
Additional mixing by Evan Kelly. Additional research support by Dexter McMillan and Aloysius Wong. And voice coaching by Pippa Johnstone.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
You can check both out right here in the Uncover feed.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
There was no test. He simply tossed the samples in the garbage.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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 Vargard Acumetrics.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
And the man with those answers? The company's owner?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
I'm Jorge Barrera. This is Bad Results, Chapter 6, Travesty.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
Dr. Harvey, please. 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, it's Jorge Barrera. You see, we've heard from a former Acumetrix employee who alleges he saw Kyle tossing prenatal paternity samples into the garbage.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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 Suey.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
I don't know. You guys never get snow. Freaking 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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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...
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Well, 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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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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 believed 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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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. Uh-huh. Calling BioGuard Acumetrix. So we take Harvey at his word and call Acumetrix the next day.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Okay, but there's a lot of victims here. So, we try another route and call one of his lawyers.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Yeah, but I'm trying, but he doesn't want to sit down and explain how the lab continually had wrong prenatal paternity test results. Like this is over like a decade.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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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 the instances of false positives that Viagra delivered... almost impossible.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
Rachel and I have heard a lot about Kyle through our investigation. He's the voice on the other end as Kodal and her mom try to get answers over the telephone from Acumetrix.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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 a Hudson Correctional Center green jacket. looked at his family, gave a quick little thumbs up before it all started.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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 prosecutor and the judge talked about the victims and what they were purchasing.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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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 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 for the judge. In the end, the judge sides with the prosecution.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results
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., El Chapo, and P. Diddy's kid, Justin Combs.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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From 2013 until at least 2020, Kyle was the technical manager at Acumetrix, overseeing sample collection.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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I came across your client, Kyle Sui, 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.
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And who did the investigation in Accumetrix?
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This is news to us. We know Corral 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. Codal got nowhere. Rachel and I called as well. All dead ends.
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But it does over and over again. People turning to Acumetrix and then later finding out the person named as the father is wrong. The same pattern for years. In the end, Sarah's lawsuit didn't seem to make much of a dent in Acumetric's business. So it continued, relatively unfazed, branching out into different DNA markets, both overseas and at home, including testing for indigenous ancestry.
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And that's when I got the call that pulled me onto Acumetric's trail.
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The first time I hear the name Acumetrix is while listening to this story about the woman who believed she was Beothuk. It catches my attention because at the time I'd been reporting on stories about pretendians or people pretending to be indigenous. And this Beothuk story has some of those same hallmarks.
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The very next day, her story gets fact-checked, and questions about the DNA sample are front and center.
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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. They tell me the group is also using Acumetrix for Indigenous Ancestry testing, and there's something off about it.
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The Confederation sells membership cards that the group claims give Indigenous status, granting cardholders the right to hunt, fish, and buy cars tax-free. But to get a card, you need to prove you're Indigenous. And one of the ways to do that? A DNA test, which is done by Acumetrix, at a cost of $250 a pop. The company stands to make an awful lot of money.
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But they don't want to talk. They bounce me to the leader of the Confederation of Aboriginal People.
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Okay. And what's his name again?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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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 Viaguard Acumetrix.
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But some of Carl's ex-members, they're not so sure.
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Daniel Brabant is a former member of the Confederation. He heard rumors that there's something funny going on with the Acumetrix indigenous DNA test. Things like multiple people getting eerily identical ancestry results. So he turns to his dog, a French poodle named Molly.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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He swabs Molly the poodle, then he puts the swab in a plastic bag, packs it up in a box and sends it off to be tested by Acumetrix.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Yep, according to Acumetrix results, Molly the poodle has Indigenous ancestry. So I call Acumetrix back.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Okay, well, I mean, the issue is that two people separately submitted DNA samples to Viagard directly, and they received results that they had Native American ancestry, but they actually sent DNA samples from their dogs. So I need to speak with Mr. Tenenbaum about this because he's the company owner, right?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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CBC News reporting Torpedo's Grand Chief Carl's group. He's eventually charged with fraud for selling those fake Indigenous status cards. Around the same time, he was also convicted for sex crimes involving a minor. But that case is unrelated to this DNA testing investigation. Carl is still facing trial on the fraud charges.
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So how did Acumetrix 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. Not long after, the Beothuk references on the Acumetrix website vanish. But it wouldn't be the last time an indigenous ancestry test would catch the company out. And the next time, I would be the reporter getting the tip.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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But what about Harvey and Acumetrix's responsibility for the indigenous ancestry testing? When I approach them, the company refuses interview requests. They send a statement in an email. It basically says these indigenous ancestry tests have no legal value anyway. And they blame the messed up results on the customers, who they say probably contaminated the samples.
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It's Acumetrix's go-to explanation. They stop offering the indigenous DNA testing, but they're still in the dog DNA testing business. And dogs keep tripping Acumetrix up.
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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 Viagard Acumetrix. Marketplace sends in DNA samples from three dogs for testing, but it also sends a sample from a human. The show's host, Travis Danraj, pretending it's from a dog.
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The Danrej sample should come back as a failed test. But the Acumetrix result?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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Acumetrix tripped up by a dog again. The Marketplace investigation exposes clear issues with the company's DNA testing services. You see, Acumetrix also asks CBC for either a picture of the dog or its suspected breed. So CBC says, shepherd. Marketplace asked Acumetrix about Travis' result.
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But these issues, they'd been noticed by people who worked inside the company.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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People like Samantha Friday, who worked at Acumetrix, she told my colleague Rachel that she had suspicions about this particular type of test.
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So what Sam is suggesting here is that Accumetrix uses customer information, not actual DNA, to come up with its results. But if we want to confirm this, to get direct answers about what is happening inside the lab, we need to get to Harvey. Yet every time we feel like we're getting closer to him, closer to the truth, he slips away.
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That's as close as I get to him. A voice in the background. So Rachel and I come up with a plan.
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A legal note here. Over the course of this podcast, you're going to hear a number of allegations made against Vygarde Acumetrix and its employees. When asked, company owner Harvey Tenenbaum said he stands by the tests and that any errors were caused by customers during sample collection. Bad Results is written and reported by Rachel Houlihan and me, Jorge Barrera. Mixing and producing by AC Rowe.
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A call that would lead to a whole new set of questions about the company's DNA testing services.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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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 CBC News Podcasts.
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And at the same time that this Beothuk story was blowing up, thousands of kilometers away, a woman named Sarah Domenico had her own questions about the company. And she would do something very few would try when burned by Acumetrix. She would take them to court.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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I'm Jorge Barrera. This is Bad Results, Chapter 4, Dog by Controversy.
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The story of Sarah's court battle with Viagard Acumetrics begins in 2013. She's just ended a years-long on-again, off-again relationship. She's hanging out in downtown Oakland when she sees this guy going by on his bicycle.
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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. It's a surprise. A good one. She's 36.
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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.
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But there's this nagging little worry. What if she's wrong? John is black. Micah is white.
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When Sarah lands on the Acumetrix website, she's drawn to it.
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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.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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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. She's now three months pregnant and desperate to know.
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And there is this one receptionist.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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This goes on for six weeks, call after call, until finally, Sarah gets an answer. According to Viagra Documentrics, John is the biological dad. Micah's results?
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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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.
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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. Micah is still in the dark about Sarah's doubts. She's now six months pregnant and still waiting for that yes or no.
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But the results from Micah's sample come back as inconclusive for a second time. So Sarah breaks the news to Micah.
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Sarah packs up her stuff and leaves the spacious apartment she shares with Micah.
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John dotes on Sarah and his family embraces her.
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It's a first pregnancy for them both. And together, they plan a California birth.
Sea of Lies from Uncover
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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.
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John is there through the pain, the cursing. He also has a specific assignment.
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And once again she's on the phone.
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She keeps asking to speak with Harvey but now Harvey is never around.
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So Sarah tells the receptionist, find me someone else to speak with.
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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 Acumetrix.
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It's the stuff of fiction. The lone descendant of a long-lost people steps out of the shadows.
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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 Acumetrix. 10 months of paper sparring, the usual in civil litigation. She's seeking damages for the despair, frustration, and humiliation Acumetrix inflicted by its wrong results. It's a big moment.
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Sarah's doing what no other victim has done, pursuing a case against Acumetrix. For its part, Acumetrix's filings say Sarah's got no case and it should be tossed.
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Accumetrix is here to settle. They've put an offer on the table. Sarah, though, she wants to go to trial. She's determined to put this company out of business. But inside the judges' chambers, she feels like she's the one on trial.
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Sarah signs on the dotted line, agreeing to Acumetrix's terms, which means she can't disclose the financial details of the settlement. She didn't get the accountability she wanted, but at first Sarah feels that the settlement is kind of a win.
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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. It flattened everything she had gone through, turned all her emotions from heartbreak to anger into a single feeling. Shame.
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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.