Covid Aid Scams and Dodgy Deals Could Have Been Avoided
Lack of federal leadership turns contracting for supplies into the Wild West.
No one’s looking closely enough.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Almost every scam is a little bit funny, even when linked to the deadly serious coronavirus. Consider BuzzFeed’s latest installment in the genre:
The site reported on Thursday that Yaron Oren-Pines, an electrical engineer in Silicon Valley, managed to make millions of dollars selling ventilators he apparently never had and never could supply. Three days -- three days! – after he tweeted to President Donald Trump, “We can supply ICU Ventilators, invasive and noninvasive. Have someone call me URGENT,” New York State paid him $69.1 million for 1,450 ventilators. BuzzFeed noted that amounted to $47,656 for each ventilator – or at least three times the normal price of high-end ventilators.