A very Silicon Valley scam
By According to court documents, Mark Schena, 60, of Los Altos, California, was the president of Arrayit Corporation. Schena engaged in a scheme to defraud Arrayit’s investors by claiming that he had invented a revolutionary technology to test for virtually any disease using a single drop of blood from a finger stick sample. In meetings with investors, Schena and his publicist claimed that Schena was the “father of microarray technology” and that he was on the shortlist for the Nobel Prize. Schena also falsely represented to investors that Arrayit could be valued at $4.5 billion.
Schena was sentenced to eight years in prison back in October. I forgot this was in my drafts so consider it a slightly belated Winter Solstice present.
As the COVID-19 crisis began to escalate in March 2020, Schena and others made false claims concerning Arrayit’s ability to provide accurate, fast, reliable and cheap COVID-19 tests in compliance with state and federal regulations, and made numerous misrepresentations to potential investors about the COVID-19 tests and Arrayit’s future prospects for COVID-19 testing.
Schena stated that it was simple to develop a test for COVID-19 because the switch from testing for allergies to testing for COVID-19 was “like a pastry chef” who switches from selling “strawberry pies” to selling “rhubarb and strawberry pies.” Arrayit’s stock price doubled in mid-March, but Schena and others never disclosed that there were questions about the validity of its data and the accuracy of its COVID-19 test.
Here is the original complaint for your amusement. I salute Postal Inspector Hallstrom for resisting the urge to conclude her report with “The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.”
It is hard to decide what the best thing about the case of a SV slimebucket who launched Theranos II so soon after Theranos I crashed and burned. According to the complaint, Arrayit was touting the superiority of its technology to Theranos’ in 2020.
Of course, there’s the fact he was nabbed and convicted. But also, Schena had been running a lab test-based scam for a few years before this scam. Do what you love and you’ll never work a day of your life, I guess.
I assume most commentarions do not know enough about lab fraud to stay on topic, so consider this an open thread.
