They needed certainty. They got chaos. For over a decade, countless people from at least five different countries put their trust in a company offering prenatal paternity tests. It promised clients “99.9% accuracy” — but then routinely, for over a decade, identified the wrong biological fathers.
Investigative journalists Jorge Barrera and Rachel Houlihan track down the people whose lives were torn apart by these bad results, the shattered families and acrimonious court cases that followed, and the story behind the company that continues to stand by its testing and is still operating today.
They needed certainty. They got chaos. For over a decade, countless people from at least five different countries put their trust in a company offering prenatal paternity tests. It promised clients “99.9% accuracy” — but then routinely, for over a decade, identified the wrong biological fathers.
Investigative journalists Jorge Barrera and Rachel Houlihan track down the people whose lives were torn apart by these bad results, the shattered families and acrimonious court cases that followed, and the story behind the company that continues to stand by its testing and is still operating today.
Four years later, a Canadian college student named Corale needs to identify the father of her unborn baby. The 19-year-old turns to Viaguard Accu-Metrics for a prenatal paternity test. Like John, her world is rocked by tests that name the wrong dad. Unlike John, she starts asking questions and connecting dots. “Are there other people? Am I the only one?”
A legal note: Over the course of this podcast, a number of allegations are made against Viaguard Accu-Metrics and its employees. When asked, company owner Harvey Tenenbaum said he stands by the test, and that any errors were caused by customers during sample collection.