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Rachel Houlihan

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Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E2: Who's the father? | Bad Results

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How is this company getting away with this? Who works there? Who's answering the phones? Who's analyzing the samples, playing with science and people's fates? Next time on Bad Results, we go looking for people who can take us inside the company.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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It takes a few goes, but Sika does well. Harvey never yells at her, even when she goes off script trying to be kind to nervous callers with questions about paternity tests.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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I'm telling you this story because that patient person sitting next to George is the scientist behind this claim, a scientist who works for Viagard Acumetrics.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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Sam is also following the script, but she's starting to have a lot of questions about why they need this information from their customers.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

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The test is going to say A or B. But customers, they answered all these questions, even if they didn't quite know why they were being asked.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

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And so Sam eventually puts the question to Harvey.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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Sika tells me she assumed the test was done to confirm that guess, but she doesn't really know. Sam also has assumptions.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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Sam and Sika both see a lot of things that don't add up. But neither of them feel like they can push back. On one hand, they really need their jobs. Plus, neither know the first thing about DNA testing. Neither ever step foot in the actual lab. They work on the ground floor. The lab's in the basement. Their job is strictly to answer the phones.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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Kyle. Kyle Sui. The same Kyle Corral would argue with years later about conflicting paternity tests. When this Diefenbaker love child story broke back in 2013, the commercial DNA market was just taking off, with companies like 23andMe making these kinds of tests mainstream. Kyle was a brand new hire at Acumetrix, and he was going to help put this company on the map for better or worse.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

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But the calls they're answering, they start to raise red flags.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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Some of the calls are from people in child custody proceedings who've taken new court-ordered paternity tests. And those results don't match the ones they got from Acumetrix.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

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And then what about when people would call with complaints?

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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Sam and Zika know something's not right. But what? Maybe the test just isn't very accurate. Maybe it's incompetence, poor records management, bad sample collection, or some combination of it all. Over the course of our investigation, Jorge and I try to get answers to these specific questions in a bunch of different ways. We reach out to Harvey's lawyer, who declines to comment.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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We send emails to Harvey that go unanswered. But I keep thinking that if I talk to enough victims and hear enough of their stories, the penny will drop. And then it does. So where am I calling? 512, where is that? Austin, Texas. Austin, Texas. All right. Back in 2019, Melissa Benton had a baby on the way and was in a relationship with a partner who has what she calls trust issues.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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So even though Melissa is 100% certain who the dad is, there simply is no other man, she starts looking for a company to do a prenatal paternity test. She comes across Prenatal Paternities Inc., not knowing it's a small lab up in Canada that also goes by the name Acumetrix. She picks it because it's the cheapest company she finds.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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She orders the kit online. She fills out a basic form, no leading questions, just her mailing address, that sort of thing. When her kit arrives, it's a fingerprint kit, just like the one Coral did in her bathroom with friends. But Melissa can't get any blood, so Acumetrix sends her a medical tube to take to a local lab for a blood draw.

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S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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She then swaps the dad's mouth, packages up the samples, and mails them off to Acumetrix.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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the only possible father, the only man Melissa has recently had sex with, the Acumetrix test says he is not the father. A zero percent chance. Melissa immediately calls her partner.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

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And the testing is 99.99% accurate. 99.99% accurate. This is the promise, the sales pitch that Acumetrix will use to grow its business, to sell its services around the world, doing everything from dog breed analysis to paternity tests. And while we can't confirm or refute anything about George Dryden's father, former prime minister or otherwise, that's not the point.

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Melissa is furious and fires off an email to Acumetrix. In a follow-up call, she's told that the lab tech who did her test is on vacation, but they believe the preservative in the tube might have skewed the results, or maybe there was cross-contamination. That's an explanation that will come up again in other cases.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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The Acumetrix rep then suggests Melissa retry their finger prick method, which she refuses. Melissa wants a refund, but Acumetrix wants proof they named the wrong dad. So Melissa shells out $1,500 for a second prenatal paternity test with a different company. And it confirms what she knew all along. Her partner is the father.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

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Acumetrix concedes they got it wrong, but to get her money back, Melissa's got to sign a document waiving her right to sue and to keep the whole thing confidential. This was the moment for me when the penny dropped. How many women got wrong test results, pushed for a refund, and then were silenced by this document? How many people got caught up in the promises the company was making?

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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I put this question to Sam and Sika.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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Per night. Some quick back-of-the-envelope math tells me this could be around a thousand orders a year that any one employee is filling. And that's lowballing it.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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Bins and bins of files, all filled with results that could make a family or break it apart. At last check, the Facebook group Coral started, the one for people who say they got wrong prenatal paternity test results from Acumetrix. It has about 100 members. But what Sam and Sika are describing is maybe thousands. And Sam, she has advice for all of them.

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S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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All those tests, all those calls, all those complaints. Jorge and I wondered, why did no one try to stop the company?

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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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 Viagard Acumetrix and its employees. When asked, company owner Harvey Tenenbaum said he stands by the test and that any errors were caused by customers during sample collection. Bad Results is written and reported by Jorge Barrera and me, Rachel Houlihan. Mixing and producing by A.C. Rowe.

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.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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The point is that George died a few years ago, at peace with his identity and believing what Accumetrix told him. And in the years that followed that media splash, countless pregnant women and potential fathers would also believe Accumetrix. believe the company sold them not just a prenatal paternity test, but that peace of mind.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

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You know, like, it's obviously legit. It's a DNA company. Yet behind the promise and the publicity, behind the closed doors at this lab, things were not what they seemed. And the people who work there have a very different version of the truth.

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S30 E3: Stick to the script | Bad Results

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I'm Rachel Houlihan. This is Bad Results, Chapter 3. Stick to the script. At this point, my co-host Jorge and I are many months into our investigation. We had so many questions. Who works there? What do they do? What do they know? It had been a frustrating chase. Employees kept flaking on us, not returning calls or saying they want to talk, but can't or won't. What are they so scared of?

Sea of Lies from Uncover

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So it feels like a lucky break when Samantha Friday actually shows up.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

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We've parked on a residential side street just around the corner from the company's headquarters. Sam hasn't been in this area for a while.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

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Does that surprise you?

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When Sam first started working at Acumetrix back in 2018, she was pretty desperate.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

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She was trying to get her life back on track, returned to school to finish her business management degree when she found the Acumetrix job listing on Kijiji.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

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That's the company's owner, Harvey Tenenbaum.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

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Most days, she worked the phones with a few others.

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And it doesn't take long for her to pick up on a kind of subtle chaos in the office.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

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But she doesn't want to ask a lot of questions. Remember, she's living in her car. She needs this job. So she focuses her attention on the phones.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

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Paternity tests were in demand, with calls from potential customers from all over the world, the UK, Australia, the US. Sam estimates during a nine-hour shift, she would personally answer between 50 and 100 calls.

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Sam answers the questions, tries to make the sale and fills out the paperwork. All of it under Harvey's watchful eye.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

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It's a splashy, salacious political story, at least for Canada. George Dryden is making headlines, claiming he's the secret love child of a former prime minister.

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Harvey signs off on everything, approving every prenatal paternity kit that goes out.

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At this point, we're still trying to learn more about Harvey and Acumetrix. We glean a few clues from the promotional videos he's posted on the company YouTube channel, most of which aren't about paternity tests.

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In this video from 2013, Harvey sits at a desk covered in papers. Behind him, there's a background. It's some sort of room divider. And on it, there's a scene in gold and black of people riding horses. And there's maybe a palace or a temple. It's hard to tell. Harvey has been busy this year, carving out his niche in the growing DNA home testing landscape.

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He's giving public talks.

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Invited to speak to the Law Society of Ontario.

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Standing at the podium, in his oversized blazer with his poorly knotted tie, he talks about his company's drug and alcohol testing services.

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Harvey is around 80 years old in most of these videos, all recorded about a decade ago. At an age when most people are well into retirement, Harvey is adding service after service and test after test to his business.

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He's now offering services through dozens of websites, selling everything from infidelity tests to dog DNA testing.

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Just swab your dog's mouth, mail it in, and you learn about your dog's background. All for $59.

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And if the doggy DNA test reveals some surprises, say that your golden doodle isn't so golden, it's no big deal.

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With his bulldog jowls, middle-aged George is a mirror image of the long-dead and long-believed-to-be-childless politician.

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In 2014, Accumetrix gets a coveted gold star of approval from the Standards Council of Canada. This means the company meets international standards to do DNA tests for federal immigration cases.

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The Children's Aid Society is now using the company for drug and alcohol testing. And the RCMP puts Acumetrix on its approved list too, to take fingerprints used in things like criminal background checks and adoptions. And Harvey's got that new employee, Kyle Suey. Kyle has just finished his PhD in pharmaceutical science at the University of Toronto. business, it seems, is booming.

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But all the while, the core of the company is its paternity tests, and prenatal paternity tests in particular. They've now got a prenatal site targeting Americans, and advertise a New York office, and another website aimed at the Brits, with a London office, and a site for Australians too. Acumetrix claims it is a world leader in this type of test and that the results are definitive.

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He makes it sound pretty easy.

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And all of it is run out of the company headquarters in Toronto, which from the outside looks like any small storefront in any nondescript grey two-storey building in pretty much any city in the world.

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Sika Reshot started at Acumetrix the same year as Sam.

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We're sitting in Sika's basically empty apartment. She's a steadfast minimalist, which is really at odds with her appearance. Sika's almost six feet tall and wears gigantic cat eye glasses.

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She waves her hand with its long, bright red sparkly fingernails dismissively. It's your nails. They're very long. In 2018, Sika found herself living in Toronto after a very short marriage to a Canadian fell apart. She didn't know a soul here. She urgently needed a place to live and money. Quick money, yeah. She finds the Acumetrix job posting on Craigslist.

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For years, George believed Diefenbaker was his dad, and now a DNA test confirms it.

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And the first time she meets Harvey, she's brought straight into his office.

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Like Sam, Sika is hired on the spot to work the phones. She's trained by the main secretary, who tells her Harvey will be watching and listening to everything she does. There are two rules at the office. The first, always answer the phones.

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Sika works nights, and the company kept careful count of how many prenatal kits she'd sell each shift. The test is among the most expensive the company sells, at around $800 each. The second rule, once you're on the phone, stick to the script. So the secretary tells Sika.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

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It's a starter home with a huge yard and a window over the kitchen sink, the kind where you can do dishes while keeping an eye on kids playing outside. And one of the three bedrooms is already painted blue. A bit of good luck, because they're expecting a boy.

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The birth, on May 2, 2016, doesn't play out like the cliched movie scene John had hoped. But it has its moments.

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The labor was rough, though. And immediately after the baby is born, the mother is taken away for some extra medical attention.

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John's overwhelmed, but his attention quickly turns to his newborn, Travis.

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For 20 minutes, it's just John and Travis. He holds his baby and takes it all in. Then he remembers the very full waiting room.

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I'm Rachel Houlihan.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

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The mother recovers, and then slowly, with family support, the two begin the next stage of their life together. Parenthood. John settles in as a new dad, and his friend Delano watches him embrace his new role.

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The two friends don't see each other much anymore, but Delano understands.

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And for many months, we've been investigating a story that's still unfolding today.

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A family man with a lot of support from his own mother, who's now a doting grandmother.

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Even with help from family though, becoming a new parent is hard. And for John, in his casual situationship that became so unexpectedly serious, well, the cracks reveal themselves quickly and the couple breaks. I did the best I could, John tells me. And without pause adds, she did the best she could too. When Travis is around five months old, the fighting becomes too much.

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She moves in with her mother, John moves in with his. That starter home, once so full of hope and expectation, sits dark and empty. The two try, and for a while succeed in sorting out an informal co-parenting arrangement. But then come the negotiations over who gets the firsts. The first Halloween. The first Thanksgiving. And then the deal breaker. The first Christmas.

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They agree John will take Travis to his family's celebration on Christmas Eve. And in pictures from that night, it's clear the baby is the star, front and center in family photos in his festive red and white striped onesie. But John lingers and stays way later than the two had agreed, leaving Travis's mother waiting and waiting. There's an explosive, ugly fight that night.

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The next day, Christmas Day, John calls in the hopes of seeing Travis, but she is still furious.

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So John quickly hires a lawyer and files for custody.

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John has one short visit on New Year's Day. The next one is scheduled for Wednesday, January 11th at 6.30 p.m.

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John calls his lawyer over and over, but he can't get him on the phone. His head is spinning.

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In a text, John reminds her of the DNA test from Prenatal Paternities, Inc. that confirmed him as the boy's father.

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But there was. Travis's mother had just done another paternity test with the baby's other possible father. I call her and we speak on background, but we're not naming her to protect her family's privacy. She tells me there was something about the way Travis looked that kept reminding her of the other man. It had been bothering her for a while.

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And when things blew up with John, she thought, for better or worse, it was time to test again. John's lawyer steps in, tells him he needs to be retested too. They choose the lab, one that's not Prenatal Paternities, Inc. He's sent to an actual laboratory. There's extensive paperwork, signatures, witnesses, copies of photo ID are taken. John is fingerprinted, photographed.

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And at the center of it, a small Canadian lab with an explosive secret.

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This is what's called a legal chain of custody paternity test. And it's the only kind that will stand up in court. And it confirms the unthinkable.

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This baby he loves, this baby he's been raising for eight months, doesn't share a shred of his DNA.

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John's biological link to Travis was either a mistake or a lie. But before he can wrap his head around how the first company, Prenatal Paternities, Inc., got it so wrong, his lawyer starts calling him, urging him to sign away custody.

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The relationship with Travis's mother is now beyond repair. An entirely new family is entering the baby's life. John and his family are being replaced. He sees no other option but to give up his paternal rights. After a month of agonizing, he finally signs the papers. John never sees Travis again.

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a pattern of naming the wrong dads.

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John's mother, Jenny, digs through a clear plastic bin she's put on his coffee table. It's full of mementos from when she was a first-time grandmother. Gosh, it's hard thinking and remembering all this.

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We're sitting side by side on the big leather couch in John's living room while she pulls out one item after the next. This bin has sat untouched in her attic for eight years.

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There are lots of pictures of Travis. And oddly enough, he's got the same blue eyes as Jenny and John.

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There's also a handwritten note in the bin from the birth mother, written when Travis was a few months old.

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John sits to the side, cross-legged, staring at his phone. He barely looks up at his mother or the bin.

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For Travis's first birthday, Jenny bought him a gift card to Toys R Us and a book, Happy Birthday to You by Dr. Seuss. She hadn't seen him for over five months. All ties had been instantly severed. She didn't know her place in his life anymore. Still, she got the biological grandmother's address and put together a package. She pulls up a photo on her phone of the card she sent.

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And it all went unchecked for more than a decade, from Canada to the US, from the United Kingdom to Australia. Those are the situations where like, oh no, you know it's really wrong. Can something actually be done now? Because this is huge.

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In the months after losing Travis, John lives with his mother. He can't stand to be in the house he bought, the one he thought he'd raise a family in.

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Family and friends rallied around John and helped pull him out of the spiral. His darkest thoughts eventually receded. Almost nine years have now passed. And today, sitting around with his buddy Delano, he can joke about all of it. Sort of.

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But the questions, they never stopped. They eat at him.

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How did this happen? Was it all just bad luck? Or was it something more?

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Neither John nor his ex ever reached out to Prenatal Paternities, Inc. about the wrong test result. In the chaos that engulfed their lives, neither had the emotional bandwidth. As part of our investigation, we reached out to the company about their tests. They had no comment. But John's story doesn't end there. And for Jorge and me, it was the beginning of something bigger.

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And that Facebook group leads us to a small lab on the eastern edge of Toronto.

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I trusted those results. But instead of certainty, it created chaos.

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I couldn't breathe.

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And to pin this story down, we did everything from rifling through corporate records to using hidden cameras for an undercover sting. Because what would you do if somebody came back to you and said, you got the answer wrong?

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And conversations with dozens of people, from former employees still disturbed by what they saw and heard, to families who told us about the moment when reality, as they knew it, was shattered.

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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 Viagard Acumetrix and its employees. When asked, company owner Harvey Tenenbaum said he stands by the test and that any errors were caused by customers during sample collections. Bad Results is written and reported by Jorge Barrera and me, Rachel Houlihan. Mixing and producing by A.C.

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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.

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How are you doing? I've just arrived at John Brennan's condo in Atlanta, Georgia. I've flown in from Toronto to meet him and his very excited dog, Kona. Months ago, I'd reached out to John by email with my usual preamble. Hi, my name is Rachel Houlihan. I'm a journalist working on a story about a company that does paternity tests. Can we talk?

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These stories are really personal, so I didn't know how much John would want to share. But on the phone, to my surprise, he was an open book. He actually told me, I'm an open book. It's a relief, because this story that I'm investigating with Jorge, most of it is not open. John's tall and lean, and he has these really bright blue eyes.

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His place is sparsely decorated, tidy, and it has the obligatory man cave leather couch, plus a few other signs that the 31-year-old lives alone. Yeah, I noticed you have no food in your fridge. Is that because that's bachelor lifestyle?

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Now that we're meeting in person, he does seem nervous, like really nervous. He's even a bit pale, which I didn't expect given our initial conversations. But it does explain why his best friend Delano Rodriguez is here.

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The two grew up together. They've been friends since the fifth grade. And Delano was there when a prenatal paternity test turned John's entire world upside down.

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The story of that lie starts back in 2015. John is 21 years old and he's living with Delano and three other friends.

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All of life's big decisions still lie ahead. He's single, he's studying finance, and he has a vision for what his future will look like.

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But that was his future plan. Back then, at 21, John was all about having fun, including fun with girls. And there was one girl who was around a bit more than others.

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It was all very cool and all very casual until suddenly it wasn't.

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And it's all definitely confusing too, because she doesn't know who the dad is. The baby could either be John's or another guy's.

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Yeah, the era of daytime trash TV. We're talking 1996 NBC Universal lineup.

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They scramble for answers.

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When Jorge and I first started working on this story, we had the same question. What is a prenatal paternity test? Well, for one, it's a real test. And here's my best shot at explaining it. First, you need a blood sample from the pregnant woman because the baby's DNA is floating in it. And then usually a mouth swab or another DNA sample from the potential father or fathers.

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The test works a bit like a jigsaw puzzle. Thousands of pieces of the unborn baby's DNA need to align perfectly with thousands of pieces of paternal DNA for it to be a positive match. If the puzzle pieces don't line up, the test will come back negative. You're not the dad. If the pieces sort of match up in a few places but mostly don't, it will come back as inconclusive.

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But a false positive, a test saying you're the dad when you aren't, the chances of that happening are basically zero. It's a very accurate test. In 2015, when John goes looking for the test, the technology is still pretty new. Lots of companies are popping up offering the test. The one John and the mom-to-be choose is like a DNA test broker. It farms out the actual testing to another company.

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This will end up being important, though the couple doesn't know it at the time. But they do know it's going to be convenient with an at-home sample collection service.

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We hear this over and over and over again while researching this story. Pivotal moments where people don't trust their gut. And I get it. They're feeling vulnerable. Their entire future is in question. And they need answers. So they set their misgivings aside. And they put their trust in the only thing that makes sense in that moment. The science.

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And in the middle of all the chaos, the big moment, when an envelope is opened and we hear the results of a DNA test revealing the truth. Who is the dad?

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Besides, by this point, John's around a thousand bucks in.

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And so they wait for two agonizing weeks.

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John and the mom-to-be line up a three-way call.

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A match. It's said so casually, John's in shock.

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So the company emails the result. And at the top of the page, in bold letters, the name of the lab that did the test, Prenatal Paternities, Inc.

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At 21 years old, John is going to be a dad.

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The holidays can be stressful for a lot of different reasons. For one, there are usually some awkward conversations with relatives you don't see very often. Well, John, John decided to take that awkwardness up a notch.

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And not just for John.

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John's mom, Jenny Brennan, has the demeanor of a much-loved elementary teacher. I can't imagine her getting mad at the grade ones she teaches. And seeing her and John sitting together, I now know where John gets his bright blue eyes from.

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Whatever concerns were looming over the sudden new trajectory of John's life, or whether this fledgling couple could make it work, were pushed aside to make room for Jenny's first grandchild.

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Yeah, we were all in. Everyone was all in. Aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, right down to co-workers.

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And the test result in the envelope, the one that's supposed to reveal the truth? Well, in this story, it doesn't.

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John sells his motorcycle and breaks his lease on the filthy frat house. He gets a job in pest control, working overtime to make ends meet. The money he had been saving since he was 13 years old is finally spent on a house and the young couple moves in together.

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But the problem over the years was... Can't we just eat a lot of berries?

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Harvey is saying he's developed a lotion to stave off dementia. But there currently is no product that will effectively prevent or treat Alzheimer's or related dementias. So if Harvey's claim is true, this would be groundbreaking science. According to his LinkedIn page, Harvey has a PhD in pharmacology from the University of Toronto. That's why employees sometimes called him the doctor.

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We asked the university to confirm his degree, and they found one. A Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy from 1958. But as for the PhD, the university has no record of one matching the name Harvey Tenenbaum.

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I am curious. And I see an opening to ask another question. I can't see the lab, can I?

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I notice the other offices are dark and empty, not a soul around.

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As I walk out, I wonder, where's Kyle? Is anyone even in the lab downstairs? Pretending to be a customer and talking to Harvey has given me some answers. Harvey's told me the prenatal paternity tests were, quote, not that accurate. But prenatal paternity tests, when done properly, are accurate. Well, there may be another reason Acumetrix kept naming the wrong dads.

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From there, Harvey would watch and see if today was his lucky day.

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One unrelated to the persistent excuse of cross-contamination. One that has little to do with science. Jorge and I are making a lot of calls, still trying to find someone who did the DNA testing in the lab, or at least saw how samples were handled. And then, out of the blue, that someone calls me.

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This voice you're hearing, it's an actor reading from a transcript of our interview. We agreed to protect the former employee's privacy because he's scared that any association with Acumetrix will affect his credibility in his current job.

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Like ex-employees Samantha Friday and Sika Rishat, he was desperate for a job, and he was hired on the spot. At first, things seemed fine. And he tells me there were no issues, as far as he knows, with postnatal paternity tests or the DNA tests for immigration purposes.

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He's also tasked with passing the prenatal paternity samples that come into Acumetrix up the chain to Kyle Suey.

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Kyle's name comes up a lot through our investigation. And until now, he's felt like a bit of a ghost. No one seems to know much about him. But this former employee had regular interactions with Kyle.

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And that was Harvey. Unflappable, according to Jim. We don't know much about Harvey, other than the fact that he owns Viaguard Acumetrics. He doesn't return our emails or calls. Though we've learned he's been racing horses since the 70s, and he's owned at least 150 horses over the years.

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Some DNA samples, allegedly going straight into the bin, as he calls it. The garbage. People's questions about paternity, their very futures, treated like trash.

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There's no way for him to know how many prenatal paternity samples were tossed. Still, it's a damning allegation. But why throw those samples out? Why not just do the test? When I put this to the former employee, he points to the questions in the employee script, those leading questions that Sam and Sika were told to ask customers.

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He's saying it all came down to money. But Kyle was only the second in command. The buck stopped with Harvey.

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The former employee soon realized the job wasn't worth the paycheck he so desperately needed.

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He left Acumetrix, but the company kept going, selling prenatal paternity tests for years afterwards.

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That might be true, but I'm not going dumpster diving to check, because we've learned something else. At this point in our investigation, we've spent a lot of time digging into the science behind prenatal paternity tests, how matches are made and why false positives are so rare. Experts have also told us that sample collection is best done in a lab setting to avoid cross-contamination.

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But this is not how Accumetrix did most of its testing. The main way the company collected the mother's blood sample was through the Finger Prick Home Kit, the one Coral Mayer used to collect her sample in her messy bathroom. And I still had questions about it.

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So we've come to Mohamed Akbari's lab. He's the director of the molecular genetics research lab at Women's College Hospital in Toronto. And Akbari says you need at least one vial, 10 milliliters or two generous teaspoons. And what's even better is two vials, four generous teaspoons drawn from a vein in a lab. We've confirmed that's the industry standard.

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So can you even do this at home on your finger? Of course not.

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And another top earner. Scam.

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So really, if the blood sample wasn't big enough to even run the test, why not toss them in the garbage? But what about all the other ways the company collected samples? Why were those results also wrong? John Brennan, who raised a baby for eight months before learning he wasn't the biological dad, in his case, someone came to his house and drew a couple vials of blood from his and the mom's arm.

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And then there's Melissa Benton, the woman who'd only slept with one man. She was sent to a local lab for a blood draw and mailed the sample to Acumetrix. There's no way to know for certain all the reasons these test results turned out to be wrong. But what is certain is that people put their trust in this company and that trust was misplaced.

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That confidence might make sense because of this. Acumetrix sits in a regulatory black hole. No government body is making sure this type of DNA laboratory is giving accurate results. We reached out to every province, and they all said it was up to the federal government to regulate the industry. So we asked Health Canada, what gives? And it, in turn, pointed its finger back at the provinces.

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In this void of any real oversight sits the Standards Council of Canada. The SCC helps certain industries meet international standards, though it's mostly voluntary. Accumetrix got the SCC's gold star of approval in 2014 for one specific test. DNA testing for federal immigration cases.

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But Accumetrix started to misuse the SCC's logo, making it seem like all of its testing was accredited, including its prenatal paternity tests. So in 2017, the SCC pulled Accumetrix accreditation. And in the ensuing legal tussle, the SCC inspected the company's laboratory, and we got our hands on the typically confidential report.

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Yes, Harvey had a horse name scam. The horse was born in 2010, a year when Harvey let horse racing take a back seat and his winnings took a nosedive. And perhaps that's because Harvey had a new focus, getting his lab up and running in the east end of Toronto and adding prenatal paternity testing to the Viaguard Acumetrics website. But what about all those horse names? What story do they tell?

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The inspector flagged things like a failure to log complaints, no records detailing decontamination protocols, along with concerns about how samples were handled and possible cross-contamination. The Standards Council stuck to its guns and refused to reaccredit the company. But it doesn't matter. Accumetrix stays in business with no oversight and no one protecting the public.

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It's been years since he stepped foot in the Acumetrix office, but the ex-employee hasn't let go of what he saw.

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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 Viaguard Acumetrix and its employees. When asked, company owner Harvey Tenenbaum said he stands by the test and that any errors were caused by customers during sample collection. Bad Results is written and reported by Jorge Barrera and me, Rachel Houlihan. Mixing and producing by AC Rowe.

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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 more importantly, what's Harvey's story? And can we get it? Well, we do on Hidden Camera. I'm Rachel Houlihan. This is Bad Results, Chapter 5, The Undercover Mother. Hey, can you hear me?

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So we're just on a side street off of Kingston Road. So I just want to go over the game plan and what we're trying to accomplish here just to make sure that I get what we need. What Jorge and I need is to get inside BioGuard Acumetrix. After months of piecing together details from former customers and staff, the only way to get a true picture is to go inside and meet Harvey in person.

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But I'm not going in as a journalist. CBC is allowing me to go in undercover, posing as someone needing a paternity test. I am a little nervous, but I think I'm just going to say that. Because I think a lot of people that do go in, or people that are seeking paternity tests in general, are often a little bit nervous.

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Just roll with it. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Bye. I'm going to be secretly recording my visit on a few different devices. Some I'm wearing, some I'm holding.

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In the van, my tech support does one last check of the gear.

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And finally, it's time.

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I called a little while ago and I talked to Mr. or Dr. Herbie Tenenbaum and he said I could come in and have a chat with him about one of the tests that I want to do. Oh, okay, sure. Have a seat. What's your name? Rachel. Okay, what's the test you want to do, Rachel? A paternity test. Okay, have a seat. Okay, thanks. The waiting room looks like a low-rent dentist's office. It's very sparse.

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A few chairs, a plant, and the receptionist is sitting behind a plexiglass window. After a short wait, she unlocks the door to the main office and lets me in.

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Harvey Tenenbaum.

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I'm here, yeah. Life goes on. Yeah, where should I start? I just... Start at the beginning. Okay, thank you. What's the place? I'm kind of nervous, so... Don't be nervous.

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Oh, really?

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Yeah, so I guess I just wanted to get some information about a paternity test. Okay. It's nerve-wracking and surreal to finally be here, face-to-face with the man at the heart of this story. We're sitting in his office. There's a messy paper-covered desk between us. Behind him, I recognize that peculiar black background from his many promotional videos. And I can finally make out what's on it.

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Gold horses. Which now makes sense.

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Yeah. I have a four-year-old. And so, you know, I was with my current partner. We broke up briefly. My story, my cover, is one I've heard countless times from people who used this company. And it goes like this. I'm in a relationship, then there's a breakup, then a rebound.

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Jim McElhaney knows Harvey Tenenbaum, but that's not who he's describing.

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Yeah, and I thought I knew, right?

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My current partner is not aware that there was paternity in question.

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I was expecting to walk in here and immediately feel like something was wrong. But Harvey is warm and friendly, almost grandfatherly. If I was here because I actually needed a paternity test, I would feel like he had my back, like he wasn't judging me.

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Yeah. So do I have to test both potential fathers? No, test one. You just test one. As Harvey talks, I think about Sarah Domenico, the California woman who took Acumetrix to court. When she called Harvey for advice on how to collect DNA, she says Harvey suggested she send in her partner's nail clippings. And now he's telling me something similar.

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There's nothing illegal about what Harvey's suggesting. But I've talked to a few experts, and they tell me this kind of covert DNA collection wouldn't stand up in a child custody case. As for the toothbrush, it can be a good source of DNA, but only as long as no one else has used it or handled it. Which, let's face it, in a shared family bathroom, that's a legitimate risk.

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Now Harvey's gone from suggesting I swipe a toothbrush to full cloak and dagger to collect DNA on the sly. And he'll make it easy for me.

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Second spot is Judas Wildrush. Jim's a retired jockey, and he rode Harvey's top-performing stallion to victory.

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This is something Harvey also told Sarah. Gather the samples surreptitiously so you don't wreck your life.

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Another path. The way Harvey talks, it sounds like I'm completely in control here. His lab will give me certainty, and with that, I can choose what my life will look like. I think about all the people we've spoken to who made choices based on Acumetrix results. People who ended relationships or broke up families, all because of a single prenatal paternity test. But here's the thing.

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I'm here posing as a client looking for a paternity test on a child and not as a pregnant woman. That's because we've just learned that Acumetrix no longer offers the prenatal tests. But Jorge and I don't know why. So I make the segue. Could I have done this?

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Like it did cross my mind four years ago when I was pregnant. Like, could I have saved myself a lot of heartache and actually done this while I was pregnant?

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It almost blows by. Harvey's just casually told me the test his company sold for a decade, the one he promoted for years as being able to give the definitive answer on the question of an unborn baby's paternity. Now he's saying... They're not that.

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Judith's Wild Rush. That's the horse, named after Harvey's wife, Judith. It was a moneymaker. He only paid $7,500 for it. But in its six years of racing, it earned Harvey about a million bucks.

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Cross-contamination, the go-to reason Acumetrix uses to explain why its prenatal test had a pattern of naming the wrong dads. But Harvey's explanation, and the fact Acumetrix no longer offers the test, does nothing to help the people who relied on them to be accurate. Thinking of Sarah Domenico's complex situation, I ask, What if you, like, were with people of different races?

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Yeah, that's common. Yeah, and then you have the baby.

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Yeah, I could see why you wouldn't want to do that test.

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Yeah, the stakes seem pretty high.

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Yeah, I can't imagine that.

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I can imagine that situation, actually. Jorge and I interviewed a couple from Corral's Facebook group who nearly ended a pregnancy when Acumetrix told them a recent ex-boyfriend was the father. The woman had the abortion booked, but the results from a second test done by a different company said her current partner was in fact the biological father, so they kept the baby.

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Right. So maybe, I guess, maybe I'm thankful then I didn't do it when I was pregnant.

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No, it really doesn't.

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I'm taken aback by everything Harvey is revealing to me. And I really want to leave and just talk through it all with Jorge. But Harvey? He's just getting started. And our conversation meanders into unexpected places. First, he tells me about Acumetrix and the Diefenbaby.

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He tells me about the artwork on his walls.

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Wow. Did he just name drop an old Hollywood star there? And then a dog, as if on cue, comes limping in.

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The dog is just one of many odd things in this office.

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He clarifies that it's not the slingshot used on the Goliath, but it's the exact type, excavated from some ancient site. How do you know it's real?

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For a philosophical question, it's an inoffensive one. The nature of truth. But Harvey, Harvey sells certainty under the guise of science. He tells people what's true. And then Harvey starts telling me about his latest venture.

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Yet despite all the prizes and the pageantry, as a jockey, Jim only really interacted with Harvey in the paddock right before the race.

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You did the test, Kyle? Correct.

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Right. To be honest, we have the lab looking into the issue. We're not sure what went wrong and what the issue is in this scenario.

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S30 E6: Travesty | Bad Results

83.76

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.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E4: Dogged by controversy | Bad Results

1588.135

And that plan is going to take me a little out of my comfort zone. I've got a hidden camera and I'm taking our questions directly to Harvey. Yeah, the stakes seem pretty high.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E4: Dogged by controversy | Bad Results

1607.933

Yeah, I can't imagine that.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E4: Dogged by controversy | Bad Results

1613.298

And then I get a surprise call.

Sea of Lies from Uncover

S30 E4: Dogged by controversy | Bad Results

1626.108

That's next time on Bad Results.