On the surface, Accu-Metrics was making headlines and growing strong. But two former employees paint a troubling picture of what was going on inside, from staff who don’t seem properly trained to a stream of customers complaining about test results. Plus, the questions they were instructed to ask just didn’t seem right… A legal note: Over the course of this podcast, a number of allegations are made against Viaguard Accu-Metrics 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.
Chapter 1: What is the story behind George Dryden's claim?
We all fielded calls with regards to, you know, pet DNA or immigration. However, I dealt with the paternity issue.
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.
A lot of people would be, you know, they found us online and wanting to know to verify the cost of the kits because it was quite low compared to the rest of the market. And then verify the process of going about getting the paternity test done. So it would just be a lot of answering those kinds of questions.
Sam answers the questions, tries to make the sale and fills out the paperwork. All of it under Harvey's watchful eye.
100%.
Everything went through. All the forms that we filled out would go to the doctor for approval of some kind. And then those forms would go to the mailroom to have the kits shipped.
Harvey signs off on everything, approving every prenatal paternity kit that goes out.
This sounds horrible to say, but it was kind of like, just get me my money. That was it. Just kind of get me that money.
Hi, my name is Harvey Tenenbaum, Director of Laboratory Operations for Viagard Acumetrics, a leading DNA firm.
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Chapter 2: What evidence supports George's paternity claim?
I'm going to write you a script. And she wrote it in a Sharpie. And she said, you have to say this. And I said, do I have to say word for word? And she's like, he's going to listen. Harvey's going to listen. So make sure you do a good job because I've seen him yell at people. when they don't get the script right.
So then a call came in and then he's like, next call you have to get, you have to answer and I want to hear how you do the script. So I did. And yeah, and I felt very nervous and I did a terrible job. And he didn't yell at me, but he wasn't impressed at all. He was really cross. And everyone else around me seemed to be panicking about that.
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.
The women, a lot of the time, they'll be like very shy. They'll be very embarrassed because you're basically... I guess your sexuality is up for, you know, like you can look promiscuous or whatever. And, you know, I was really cautious not to be judgmental about that. Like I would have young women, you know, calling and being like, oh, I don't even know where to start.
Sika's been coached on where to start, though, by gathering some personal details. And part of the script was to say, oh, can you tell me the date of your last period? Because I think we even had to put it in the form. Harvey showed me the ovulation calendar on Google. It wasn't anything special.
It's just like you put the date that you had sex, the date of your last period, and then it gives you a calculation around about when you got pregnant. And then you'd say something like, it's likely, you tell them who it's likely to be before you've even sent the kid or anything. You're like, it's likely to be that person.
The last date you had this, that, you know, the last date you had your period.
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.
The information we were taking just seemed irrelevant if you're going to be doing a test. I don't need to know the two people that you were involved with or the dates. These to me are things where You're tracking something where, why do we need all that? You're going to just run a test.
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