COVID Testing Center Raided By FBI Had Office In San Ramon
SAN RAMON, CA — The FBI is conducting a wide-ranging investigation of a COVID-19 testing center accused of delivering inaccurate and possibly falsified test results. On Monday, it raided the organization's Illinois headquarters.
The Center for COVID Control had more than 300 pop-up locations around the country, including one in San Ramon that the company says is indefinitely closed. The company also had locations in San Jose and Mountain View, according to NBC Bay Area. The FBI field office in San Francisco did not comment on whether agents visited any of those three locations. The city of Mountain View is one of many cities to say that it will look into its CCC’s operations.
The CCC, founded in 2020 by married couple Akbar Syed and Aleya Siyaj, has been the subject of numerous investigations. According to a lawsuit filed last week by the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, the company allegedly “either failed to deliver test results, or delivered test results that were falsified or inaccurate.” The lawsuit alleges that patients said they received results with false or inaccurate information about their tests. Former employees of the company told the attorney general that demand for its service grew so quickly that the testing sites could no longer keep up, and recounted samples “being stuffed in trash bags strewn across the office floor.”
Federal Medicare inspectors who visited CCC’s lab partner, Doctors Clinical Laboratory, complained of inadequate staff, improper sample handling, and failure to follow manufacturers’ directions, according to NBC Bay Area. Some patients have said they were encouraged by staff not to include their health insurance information, so that the federal government will be automatically billed.
A company spokesperson told NBC that was not CCC’s official policy.
In a statement released Monday afternoon, CCC acknowledged the FBI’s involvement. "Federal law enforcement agents executed a search warrant at the company’s main office," he said. "Although we cannot provide specific comments regarding ongoing investigations, the company intends to fully cooperate with all government inquiries, and remains committed to providing the best service possible to our patients.”
This article originally appeared on the San Ramon Patch
