Shen Mark (Mark Schen)

Shen Mark (Mark Schen)

Biography

2022: Convicted of tampering with COVID-19 tests

On September 1, 2022, the head of the biotechnological Arrayit Corporation, Mark Shen, was convicted of organizing a $77 million scheme that included false and fraudulent statements about testing for COVID-19 and allergies. The company said it invented technology to test for any disease with a drop of blood taken from a finger.

Its microarray technology checks for ovarian cancer, Parkinson's disease, colon cancer and male fertility, among other diseases and conditions, according to the company's website. Shen was convicted on a total of nine federal charges, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud and health care fraud, and three counts of securities fraud. Mark Shen faces up to 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit health care fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, as well as 20 years for each securities fraud charge.

Head of American pharmaceutical company convicted of counterfeiting COVID-19 tests

Beginning in 2018, Mr. Shen paid kickbacks and bribes to recruiters and doctors for conducting allergoprops on 120 different allergens, including hornet bite, shrimp, peanuts, dairy and Bermuda grass, regardless of medical necessity, federal prosecutors said. The U.S. Justice Department said it then came up with a deceptive marketing plan that falsely touted the accuracy of the test when it was not actually a diagnostic test.

Shen filed fraudulent applications with Medicare and private insurers for unnecessary allergological tests, according to the department. Arrayit Corporation has billed Medicare more per patient for allergic blood tests than any other lab in the U.S., the U.S. Department of Justice said. Some commercial insurance companies billed more than $10,000 per test.

Since the allergy testing business of Arrayit Corporation collapsed during the COVID-19 pandemic, the company turned to COVID-19 testing and said it had developed a blood-based test using its proposed technology. Since the company falsely claimed that its coronavirus infection test was more accurate than a PCR test, the US Food and Drug Administration told Shen that the Arrayit Corporation test was not accurate enough to obtain emergency use authorization. The executive hid this rejection from investors.^[1]

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