Canadian DNA lab knew its paternity tests identified the wrong dads, but it kept selling them

A Canadian DNA laboratory knowingly delivered pre‐ natal paternity test results that routinely identified the wrong biological fa‐ thers - ruling out the real dads - and left a trail of shattered lives around the globe, a CBC News investi‐ gation has found.

Harvey Tenenbaum, the owner of Viaguard Accu-Met‐ rics, told a CBC producer with a hidden camera during a conversation in his office that prenatal paternity test results that his laboratory produced for about a decade were "never that accurate."

The hidden camera con‐ versation unfolded in the midst of a months-long CBC News investigation into a years-long pattern of erro‐ neous results produced by Viaguard's non-invasive pre‐ natal paternity testing. The test - if done correctly matches DNA from a fetus that is in a mother's blood with the biological father's DNA.

Viaguard, based in Toron‐ to, sold its prenatal tests through various related on‐ line storefronts with names like Prenatal Paternities Inc. and Paternity Depot.

"The test was not that ac‐ curate…. And we're leery of that test now," said Tenen‐ baum.

Tenenbaum is 91 and still runs the laboratory, showing up onsite most days, answer‐ ing phones and meeting with customers.

WATCH | Viaguard cus‐ tomers swap stories of con‐ flicting paternity tests:

A longtime businessman, it seems he began selling DNA services through Vi‐ aguard in the early 2000s, registering a prenatal pater‐ nity division in 2013, ac‐ cording to business records.

During the hidden camera encounter, he presented himself as a seasoned scien‐ tific expert who's seen it all, and, in a matter-of-fact tone, said he knows mistaken pre‐ natal paternity results could inflict lasting damage on lives.

"There's a lot involved if it gets screwed up," Tenen‐ baum told the CBC News pro‐ ducer, who posed as a prospective customer seek‐ ing a paternity test.

"What if it's the wrong guy named and you're aborting your child of, you know, a wrong person…. We can imagine everything happens in life…. You see them all, and worse, and worse."

He also described in‐ stances where Viaguard's tests were proven wrong dur‐ ing a birth.

"That has happened. Test the white guy and the baby came out Black, and the white guy's saying: 'What's going on here?'" said Tenen‐ baum.

When CBC News later di‐ rectly approached Tenen‐ baum, he reversed himself, saying the tests were "accu‐ rate" and "perfect." He said he stopped selling them over rising overhead costs.

CBC News interviewed dozens of people whose lives were impacted by Viaguard's wrong prenatal paternity test results. Many former cus‐ tomers paid from $800 to slightly more than $1,000 for the laboratory's home test kits from 2014 to 2020.

The interviews included men and women in Montreal, North Bay, Ont., and Victoria. Other former customers in‐ terviewed were in Montana, Georgia, California, Guatemala, the U.K. and Aus‐ tralia.

In many cases, after‐ shocks still ripple, as a parent tries to make up for lost time or struggles to find the right way to reveal the truth about paternity.

"I really hate the name Vi‐ aguard," said Corale Mayer, 22, from North Bay, Ont.

WATCH | Faulty pater‐ nity test changed this At‐ lanta man's life:

Mayer received two wrong prenatal paternity test results - one identified the wrong bi‐ ological father, the other ruled out the actual one that altered the trajectory of her 2020 pregnancy.

It pushed her to try to in‐ volve a man who wanted nothing to do with her or her child, she said.

"It's extremely traumatic." Mayer helped start a soci‐ al media-based group with dozens of others who also said their lives were burned by Viaguard's wrong prenatal paternity results.

"When I found out there were other people … it was a relief," she said. "Finally, I could talk to somebody, and they would be like, 'Yup, I get that.' It was nice to feel I am not insane."

'Get me my money'

Viaguard claimed to use a common prenatal paternity test commercially available to the public since about 2014.

Experts say it is highly ac‐ curate, if conducted properly.

A non-invasive prenatal paternity test, it matches thousands of genomic data points - known as single nu‐ cleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) - in the fetal DNA, which flows in the mother's blood, with thousands of SNPs in the father's DNA.

However, Tenenbaum seemed to rely more on guesswork than science when handling at least some prenatal paternity tests, former employees alleged in interviews with CBC News.

Sika Richot worked for nearly three months answer‐ ing phones for Viaguard in 2019.

Richot said she was coached to ask women seek‐ ing prenatal paternity test kits about times in their men‐ strual cycles and the dates they had intercourse with dif‐ ferent men - information that is useless for a DNA test.

Staff put the dates into an online ovulation calendar to narrow down the possible bi‐ ological father, she said. Ri‐ chot then entered the infor‐ mation into a form that went to Tenenbaum for signoff.

"[Tenenbaum] would al‐ ways make a comment like:

'It's definitely this one [the bi‐ ological father]. It's this one, it's got to be this one,'" said Richot.

Samantha Friday, who al‐ so answered phones, worked there for slightly more than a year. She said Tenenbaum micromanaged all laboratory operations.

"It sounds horrible to say, but it was kind of like … get me my money. That was it. Just kind of get me my mon‐ ey," said Friday.

"I think anyone who has had their DNA done for what‐ ever purposes in the Toronto lab should probably consider redoing them."

Richot and Friday did not handle any samples or con‐ duct any laboratory work while working at Viaguard.

Same man, same lab, conflicting results

In 2019 Mayer, at 19, found out she was pregnant. It was a physically difficult unplan‐ ned pregnancy during a con‐ fusing time in her life. She was prescribed medicine to deal with intense nausea that often overwhelmed and de‐ bilitated her.

The physical complica‐ tions compounded another stress that overshadowed her pregnancy. She didn't know the identity of her baby's father. She said it made her feel shame, but Mayer believed a prenatal paternity test could give her some semblance of stability.

"I was like, I really need to do this now," she said. "The sooner I find out, the sooner my life can continue."

She found Viaguard online using the search terms "pre‐ natal paternity testing near me."

The laboratory offered an option to pay the $800 in two installments. The test re‐ quired her blood and a prospective father's DNA to make a match.

"It's a DNA company, it's science. It's black and white," said Mayer.

WATCH | Viaguard owner captured on hidden camera:

Mayer received a prenatal paternity testing kit from Vi‐ aguard in the mail. She was documenting her pregnancy for a school project and a friend filmed her as she pricked her finger with a lancet and squeezed drops of blood into a vial.

Then, she secured the in‐ ner-cheek buccal swab from the man she believed was the father, packed the sealed samples, put them in a box and sent them in the mail to Viaguard.

The test result said the man she tested wasn't the fa‐ ther. She sent a second set of samples to Viaguard from a different man. This time, the results said he was the match.

After the birth of her daughter, the presumed bio‐ logical father demanded a postnatal paternity test. Mayer agreed and turned to Viaguard again. This time, the result said he wasn't the bio‐ logical father.

"You know when you're just so hysterically upset, you laugh like you're just beyond emotion?" said Mayer. "There's no way that this is real."

Two months after the birth, another laboratory de‐ termined the man Mayer first tested, the one Viaguard said was a zero per cent probabil‐ ity of a match, was her daughter's actual biological father.

Mayer provided CBC News with copies of the test re‐ sults.

Viaguard began selling prenatal paternity tests in December 2010 for $800, ac‐ cording to internet archive records stored by the Way‐ Back Machine.

CBC News determined Vi‐ aguard stopped offering the tests between December 2020 and sometime in 2021.

CBC News sent Tenen‐ baum and his lawyer a de‐ tailed list of questions in March and requested an in‐ terview, but received no re‐ sponse to that query.

In late March, a reporter approached Tenenbaum out‐ side his laboratory to ask him when he first found prob‐ lems with the tests and when he stopped offering them.

"The tests were never flawed, the tests are perfect, the tests are accurate," he said as he walked to his car.

He suggested customers were responsible for mis‐ takes in results because of the way they gathered their samples to send in the mail.

"You do thousands of tests and half the errors are the collection problems," said Tenenbum.

"You're not testing people, you're testing one stain against another stain."

Viaguard had conducted thousands of prenatal pater‐ nity tests over the years, he said.

A price hike in a testing substance, not results re‐ peatedly naming false fa‐ thers, caused him to stop the tests, said Tenenbaum.

'Not something that could be done at home'

Dr. Mohammad Akbari, direc‐ tor of research at the molec‐ ular genetics laboratory at the Women's College Hospi‐ tal in Toronto, said the type of test Viaguard claimed to use depends heavily on hav‐ ing enough of a mother's blood to be able to extract the fetus's DNA.

A few drops squeezed into a vial from a finger is not enough, said Akbari. A proper test would draw at least 10 millilitres of blood from a mother's vein, he said.

Viaguard did, in some in‐ stances, use blood drawn from a vein. Some customers who used Viaguard in 2015 told CBC News that someone who appeared to be a nurse visited their home to draw their blood. In other in‐ stances, including in a Cali‐ fornia lawsuit that resulted in a settlement, customers went to a local laboratory with Viaguard's test kit for the blood draw.

Those tests also wrongly identified a biological father.

It's almost impossible, if done correctly, for these highly accurate tests, which line up thousands of DNA da‐ ta points for a match, to pro‐ duce a false positive match, to identify the wrong man as the biological father of the fe‐ tus, Akbari said.

Yet, a false positive Vi‐ aguard result happened to John Brennan in 2015.

"As soon as I saw those test results, it was like a line in the sand. Immediately, right then and there, things just changed," he said.

Brennan, from Atlanta, Ga., bought a house and a car to prepare for the sudden new reality as a father. His family swung in for support. His mother was feted with a "grandmother shower" by friends.

After the birth, his son be‐ came his world, but serious strain developed with the child's mother. Brennan hired a lawyer and spent about $20,000 in a legal bat‐ tle over custody.

The child's mother, with‐ out telling him, obtained a separate postnatal paternity test that confirmed another man was the actual biological father. She broke the news to him over a text message in January 2017.

Brennan said he spiralled into a self-destructive de‐ pression. Gaps remain in his memory of that time.

"There's not a handbook on how to handle raising a kid for eight months and then finding out that it's not yours," said Brennan. "You're left in a mysterious, dark place mentally."

While Brennan believed he was a father, he tattooed the child's name, Travis, on his upper arm. It now reads: "Travesty."

Gaps in regulations

Associate Prof. Ma'n Zawati, research director for McGill University's Centre of Ge‐ nomics and Policy in Mon‐ treal, says private commerci‐ al DNA laboratories don't need licences to operate and sell services.

Entities like Viaguard can operate by sliding through Canada's patchwork of regu‐ lations, siloed among profes‐ sional bodies, consumer pro‐ tection agencies, government entities and departments at the federal and provincial lev‐ els, he said.

Health Canada said in an emailed statement to CBC News it does not regulate commercial DNA labs like Vi‐ aguard.

The federal government should step in and fill gaps to protect consumers from a proliferation of companies selling DNA tests and fixes that could have serious im‐ pacts on the health and wel‐ fare of individuals and soci‐ ety, said Zawati.

"There is an expectation to protect the public," he said. "There is a role for Health Canada to play in that."

The Standards Council of Canada (SCC) stripped Vi‐ aguard of its accreditation in 2015. Federal Court records from the laboratory's failed legal bid to reverse the deci‐ sion show the federal agency was aware of larger issues with Viaguard.

The SCC received nine complaints against Viaguard over four years, including two "representing multiple customers," according to a 2017 SCC report.

"A common theme of er‐ roneous or inaccurate re‐ sults" ran through the com‐ plaints which focused on "pa‐ ternity or familial testing," said the report.

Viaguard still does busi‐ ness. On its website, it offers postnatal paternity and ma‐ ternal DNA tests, along with DNA bird sexing, bait to ster‐ ilize mice and rats, and dog DNA breed testing.

It runs websites selling treatments for foot fungus and dementia while operat‐ ing virtual storefronts under names like Paternity Legal, Paternity Africa and Global Paternity.

Viaguard's continued exis‐ tence frustrates some former customers like Mayer.

"The main thing I want for Viaguard is for it to close down," said Mayer. "I think that's a collective feeling. I don't think anyone would even imagine that it would still be open."