Ontario man guilty of allergy testing fraud in U.S. was key employee of DNA lab in paternity controversy
CBC
An Ontario man currently in a U.S. jail awaiting sentencing for running a fraudulent allergy testing company was also a key employee in a Canadian DNA laboratory that a CBC News investigation found has a history of producing wrong paternity results.
Kyle Tsui, 41, pleaded guilty in January to mail and wire fraud before the U.S. Federal Court for the Southern District of New York.
Arrested in Spain and extradited last November to the U.S., Tsui made millions of dollars offering allergy testing through hair samples that he ultimately tossed in the garbage without analyzing, court records show. His company was called The Allergy Testing Company.
The criminal investigation, led by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, focused on a period between September 2018 and April 2019. During that time, Tsui worked as a senior manager for Toronto-based Viaguard Accu-Metrics, according to internal records from the DNA laboratory obtained by CBC News.
A CBC News investigation recently uncovered a years-long pattern of erroneous results by Viaguard's non-invasive prenatal paternity testing. Viaguard also used different online companies, under names such as Prenatal Paternities Inc. and Paternity Depot, to sell the testing service it offered.
The laboratory sold the tests from about 2010 until 2021.
CBC News interviewed several former Viaguard employees and dozens of its customers from across Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia. The laboratory provided wrong prenatal paternity test results in each of their cases.
Harvey Tenenbaum, Viaguard's owner, recently told a CBC News producer posing as a potential customer that he knew the laboratory's prenatal paternity tests couldn't be trusted.
A Viaguard employee flowchart, created in September 2018 and updated in November 2018, listed Tsui under the title "quality manager." He reported directly to Tenenbaum, according to the document, which was obtained by CBC News.
The chart shows Tsui was responsible for overseeing employees handling sample collection from Viaguard customers.
WATCH | Viaguard customers swap stories of conflicting paternity tests:
The chart was part of a Canadian Federal Court case filed by Viaguard against the Standards Council of Canada (SCC). Viaguard tried and failed to reverse the SCC's 2017 decision to strip the laboratory of its accreditation over unauthorized use of the federal agency's logo.
Tenenbaum, who still owns and runs Viaguard, said in an emailed statement to CBC that his laboratory "had no involvement" with any of Tsui's activities that gave rise to the "legal proceedings."
He would not say when Tsui left his employ.
