Toronto DNA lab trashed some prenatal paternity samples without testing them, ex-employee alleges
A former employee of a Toronto DNA laboratory says he saw a Viaguard Accu-Metrics manager — who is now a convicted fraudster — discard some samples sent by customers before they were ever tested.
A CBC News investigation previously revealed that Accu-Metrics sold prenatal paternity testing services around the world for about a decade, knowing its results routinely identified the wrong biological fathers.
Now, a former employee has stepped forward, saying he witnessed Kyle Tsui toss some samples sent by prenatal paternity testing customers into a garbage bin behind the laboratory’s building.
None of these allegations have been proven in court. CBC News agreed to grant the former employee anonymity due to the impact revealing his name could have on his current employment.
Tsui was Accu-Metrics’s technical manager and oversaw sample collection. In September, he was sentenced to 41 months in a U.S. prison for running a separate fraudulent company on the side that claimed to test for hundreds of food allergies using just a small hair sample. Tsui admitted to tossing out those customers’ samples without ever testing them.
There is no established connection between Tsui’s food sensitivity scam company and Accu-Metrics.
The new findings in CBC News’s ongoing investigation are featured in the new CBC News podcast, Bad Results, which launched Oct. 28.
Containers never made it to the lab
Accu-Metrics operated various online storefronts under names like Paternity Depot and Prenatal Paternities Inc. These websites targeted customers in the U.S., Australia and the U.K. It began offering prenatal paternity services in about 2010 and stopped sometime in 2021.
The former Accu-Metrics employee told CBC’s Bad Results that customer packages containing saliva and blood samples would be processed by employees working on the company’s main floor. They would input information into a system, and then place the sample packages into a container.
“That container was supposedly supposed to go to the lab downstairs, but … they never did,” said the former worker.
“I would always take all of them to Kyle. And then one day, I noticed that he was just throwing them in the bin.… I saw Kyle just throwing it in the trash outside.”
It remains unclear how often customer prenatal paternity samples were thrown out during the about 10 years that Accu-Metrics sold this type of testing service.
Direct-to-consumer DNA laboratories like Accu-Metrics operate in a regulatory black hole in Canada. Health Canada told CBC the matter was the provinces’ responsibility. But provincial health authorities told CBC it was up to Ottawa to regulate these types of businesses.
Incorrect results devastated dozens
CBC News interviewed dozens of individuals for the Bad Results podcast whose said their lives were devastated by incorrect prenatal paternity results from Accu-Metrics.
One man, John Brennan, from Atlanta, Ga., found out the test results were wrong eight months after the birth of a child he thought was his son. Corale Mayer, from North Bay, Ont., received conflicting prenatal and post-natal paternity tests from Accu-Metrics on the same man, when testing her baby Harlow.
Sarah Domenico from Oakland, Calif., realized she had received an incorrect result from Accu-Metrics at her daughter’s birth because of the child’s skin colour. She later sued and settled with Accu-Metrics.
A CBC News investigation reveals how a Canadian DNA laboratory knowingly delivered prenatal paternity test results that routinely identified the wrong biological fathers and left a trail of shattered lives around the world.
CBC also spoke with a woman from Montreal who found out she had received erroneous results when her son was six years old. Another woman from Guatemala was sued by a powerful politician after they discovered their results were wrong, after the child was almost a year old.
Harvey Tenenbaum, the owner of Accu-Metrics, told CBC News the incorrect results were the customers’ fault. He claimed they contaminated the samples before they reached the laboratory.
However, in YouTube videos and on the company’s website, Accu-Metrics and Tenenbaum claimed the tests were “clinically precise [and] accurate,” providing “the definitive answer on the question of the paternity of the fetus.”
Tsui’s involvement with Accu-Metrics
Tsui became Tenenbaum’s right-hand man when he joined Accu-Metrics sometime before 2014 after obtaining a PhD from the University of Toronto’s Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences.
In 2018, he appeared on the radar of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, which discovered Tsui was running a multimillion-dollar food sensitivity testing scam through an online storefront called the Allergy Testing Company.
U.S. authorities say Tsui made about $5.9 million US in sales over eight months by defrauding at least 88,000 people.
Front Burner25:22Were years of Canadian paternity tests just guesswork?
The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York indicted Tsui in 2019 on one count of mail fraud and one count of frauds and swindles. In late 2023, he was arrested in Spain and extradited to the U.S.
Tsui pleaded guilty and admitted to renting a mailbox from a business in Hyde Park, N.Y, directing workers there to throw out hair samples that his customers sent for testing. The price of his tests ranged from $26 US to $79 US. He was sentenced in September to 44 months in prison by the U.S. Federal Court for the Southern District of New York.
Toronto police have also investigated Tsui with Accu-Metrics
Toronto Police, which helped U.S. authorities investigate Tsui on the food sensitivity case, examined Tsui’s activities with Accu-Metrics earlier this year, according to Tsui’s New York City lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman.
“We understand there’s been an investigation,” Lichtman told the Bad Results podcast. “Nothing’s come up and nothing has come of it.
“We’ve spoken to them [Toronto police], and they know we exist, and we’re prepared to speak to them if they desire.”
CBC News has also learned that two former customers burned by Accu-Metrics’s incorrect prenatal paternity test results contacted the police to file complaints against the company.
Toronto Police say they have no information about any investigation involving Accu-Metrics.
The former Accu-Metrics employee told CBC News someone with authority needs to take a closer look at the company’s activities.
“They need to be held accountable…. People need jail time. They need it.
“They need to take responsibility for what they’ve done.”
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