Jan. 20, 2022– Kevin Wynn sent the Northeaster an email Jan. 13, saying he’d noticed something suspicious in St. Anthony, and he thought it was a fake COVID testing site. Turns out he was right.
On Jan. 19, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced he was filing suit against Center for COVID Control (CCC) and Doctors Clinical Laboratory, Inc., both based at the same address in Rolling Meadows, Ill., for giving false COVID testing results.
When asked why he thought the site was suspicious, Wynn wrote, “Stories started surfacing a couple days ago in WINK News and USA Today about questionable/fake testing operations. One of my friends noticed there was one on Hiawatha here in Minneapolis with the same business name and I had happened to notice the same name in Saint Anthony later that day…it’s based in an empty ‘for lease’ space a couple doors west of Caribou on 39th . . . last night I was getting food at Chipotle and walked over to look in the window and there was a handwritten sign on the door saying they were closed for the day. It’s just a space with folding tables and some banners on the walls.”
The Northeaster contacted St. Anthony Police Chief Jon Mangseth, who said his department had tried to locate contact information for the location, but had no luck. City Hall was not able to offer any help, either.
We turned to the Minnesota Department of Health. Erin McHenry, COVID-19 communications specialist for MDH, replied, “We are aware of reports of problems with Center for Covid Control [sic]. We have experienced issues with reporting of results from this company. We have been in contact with them and asked them to resolve a number of issues. Clinical laboratories are regulated under the federal Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (known generally as CLIA). Efforts are ongoing.”
According to Ellison’s complaint, MDH began receiving complaints about Center for COVID Control in December. It reads, “After receiving those complaints, MDH observed that it had not received any COVID-19 test results from Defendants. The lack of reports was highly unusual both because of the incidence of COVID-19 in Minnesota—making it unlikely that Defendants had not processed a positive test—and because labs in Minnesota, which are aware of the importance to public health of reporting positive results, are generally diligent about reporting test outcomes to MDH. On December 22, 27, and 29, 2021, and on January 3 and 11, 2022, MDH sent correspondence to . . . Doctors Clinical Laboratory, requesting that it set up a secure connection to send test results to MDH. As of January 14, 2022, no connection has been set up.”
The complaint, submitted to the Fourth District Court, further states, “Defendants’ advertisements and representations are deceptive and misleading. Numerous Minnesota consumers have not received any test results from Defendants after submitting samples, let alone within the timeframes promised by Defendants. Even when Minnesota consumers do receive untimely test result reports from Defendants, the reports are often deceptively riddled with inaccurate and false information including listing the wrong test type and false dates and times for when samples were collected from consumers to be tested. Most disturbingly, Defendants have sometimes fraudulently represented that Minnesota consumers have tested negative for COVID-19, despite the consumer never having submitted a sample for Defendants to be tested.”
CCC and Doctors Clinical Laboratory, which supposedly runs the tests, are both owned and/or managed by Akbar Syed and Aleya Siyaj, who previously owned an ax-throwing lounge and a donut shop, according to NBC News. Neither business holds a certificate of authority from the Minnesota Secretary of State which would allow them to conduct business here. They have eight sites in Minnesota, including the one at 2700 39th Avenue NE, St. Anthony. Most sites are in the Twin Cities area, but there are clinics in Rochester and Virginia, Minn., as well. CCC has more than 300 testing sites nationwide.
The complaint relates several instances where Minnesota consumers took a rapid antigen test and received false reports. Consumers are identified in the complaint by their initials. One woman, E.S., who visited the Hiawatha Avenue site in south Minneapolis filled out a form but didn’t take the test. A short time later, she received an email with a negative test result. In St. Anthony, in late December, D.T. provided a sample for RT-PCR testing, but never received a test result.
The suit also alleges that Center for COVID Control and Doctors Clinical Laboratory have billed the federal government for more than $113 million for testing “uninisured” patients, and that computer records were falsified. “ . . . owner Siyaj, instructed employees to ‘streamline’ data entry by entering the name of a patient and immediately hit a series of keys that would input defaults for the remaining entries, including defaulting a patient’s insurance information to ‘uninsured.’” Many Minnesota patients who had insurance were listed as “uninsured.”
CCC is under investigation in Oregon, Illinois, Maryland, Wisconsin and California and by the federal government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
The CCC website said the company was taking a break from testing Jan. 14-21 to bolster its staff training. A phone call to the Center for COVID Control directed members of the media to email their inquiries. Our email went unanswered.
The lawsuit seeks to stop the two companies from conducting further COVID tests and restitution for people who didn’t receive timely and accurate tests. The Minnesota Department of Health urges people who suspect they have COVID to visit a reputable testing site. You can find one at MDH’s pandemic website, https://mn.gov/covid19/get-tested/testing-locations/index.jsp. Information is available in Hmong, Spanish and Somali as well as English.
Below: Although the Minnesota Attorney General’s complaint mentions Suite E114, the address on the storefront at 2700 39th Avenue NE is clearly Suite A118. Center for Covid Control posted a sign saying it was closed until Jan. 21. As Kevin Wynn observed, “It’s just a space with folding tables and some banners on the walls.” (Photos by Cynthia Sowden)