California tech CEO convicted in COVID-19 and allergy test fraud case sentenced to 8 years in prison

Source: Associated Press

California tech CEO convicted in COVID-19 and allergy test fraud case sentenced to 8 years in prison

Updated 7:51 PM EDT, October 18, 2023

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — A Silicon Valley executive who lied to investors about inventing technology that tested for allergies and COVID-19 using only a few drops of blood was sentenced Wednesday to eight years in prison and ordered to pay $24 million in restitution, federal prosecutors said.

Mark Schena, 60, was convicted last year of paying bribes to doctors and defrauding the government after his company billed Medicare $77 million for fraudulent COVID-19 and allergy tests, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.

Schena claimed his Sunnyvale, California-based company, Arrayit Corporation, had the only laboratory in the world that offered “revolutionary microarray technology” that allowed it to test for allergies and COVID-19 with the same finger-stick test kit, prosecutors said.

In meetings with investors, Schena claimed he was on the shortlist for the Nobel Prize and falsely represented that Arrayit could be valued at $4.5 billion, prosecutors said.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/mark-schena-arrayit-medical-fraud-sentencing-ad5e46e4805c9617c5ba57bffeb17670