Mark Schena participated in a scheme to mislead investors, commit healthcare fraud, and pay illegal kickbacks in connection with the submission of more than $77 million in false and fraudulent claims for such testing, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Office of Inspector General (OIG), announced Thursday.
In an eerie echo of claims made by executives of Theranos, which is now defunct, the VA added that Schena defrauded Arrayit investors by claiming that he invented revolutionary technology to test for virtually any disease using a few drops of blood; he also claimed to be the father of microarray technology and that he had been shortlisted for a Nobel Prize.
"Schena falsely represented to investors that Arrayit could be valued at $4.5 billion based on purported revenues of $80 million per year, concealing that the company was on the verge of bankruptcy," the VA said in a statement, adding, "Schena also orchestrated an illegal kickback and healthcare fraud scheme that involved submitting fraudulent claims to Medicare and private insurance for unnecessary allergy testing."
Arrayit ran allergy screening tests on every patient for 120 different allergens, regardless of medical necessity, the VA said, adding, "To obtain patient blood specimens, Schena paid kickbacks to marketers in violation of the Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act and orchestrated a deceptive marketing plan that falsely claimed that the Arrayit test was highly accurate in diagnosing allergies,...
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