A federal grand jury handed down a superseding indictment against the president of California-based medical technology company Arrayit Corporation, Mark Schena, in connection with the submission of over $70 million in false and fraudulent claims for allergy and COVID-19 testing. Additionally, a criminal information was filed against Paul Haje, Arrayit’s Vice President of Marketing, and Marc Jablonski, president of an Arizona-based marketing organization, in related schemes. The new charges are part of coordinated law enforcement actions filed in seven federal districts throughout the United States in response to alleged healthcare fraud schemes that are said to have exploited the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the superseding indictment and additional documents previously filed in the case, beginning 2015 and continuing to February 2020, Schena, 58, of Los Altos, Calif., engaged in a scheme to defraud Arrayit’s investors and the public by, among other things, overstating Arrayit’s status and influence and by artificially increasing and maintaining the share price of Arrayit securities. Schena and others allegedly paid kickbacks and bribes to recruiters and doctors to run an allergy screening test for 120 allergens (including things ranging from stinging insects to food allergens) on every patient regardless of medical necessity, and then made numerous misrepresentations to potential investors about Arrayit’s allergy test sales, financial condition, and its future prospects.
