
BuzzFeed News
On April 20, 2023, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti sent a memo to employees announcing that BuzzFeed News would soon shut down.
Forging vaccine cards, passing off fake medicine as the Moderna vaccine, and billing hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent tests are among the criminal activity alleged by the Department of Justice Wednesday as it unveiled a slew of COVID-related fraud charges.
The government is charging 21 people across the country in cases totaling $149 million in alleged COVID fraud. Charges include taking kickbacks, exploiting the Telehealth system, and misusing aid from the CARES Act.
Most of the $149 million total is tied to one California health clinic, which allegedly exploited people seeking COVID tests to fraudulently bill Medicare $144 million.
Matias Clinical Laboratory took the information of thousands of patients seeking COVID tests, then turned around and billed Medicare for lucrative but unnecessary procedures such as blood work, urinalysis, and tests for other respiratory diseases, the government alleged.