Stealing secret covid tests

start

Good morning, 

1. Could you please introduce yourself to the MOJ

1. Hi, I’m Chase Arensman. 

1. What do you do for a living?

1. I’m a substitute science teacher, right now I’m at Midlands middle school… go Middlers.

1. How’d you end up working there?

1. Well, I got my Ph.D in chemistry from Northwestern a few years ago, and from there I worked as a researcher in a couple labs. I was recruited to work with Scanlon Screenings, a health tech company, in early 2020. I was fired from there in December of that year. With the COVID job market and everything, I’ve been bouncing around. But I like being a teacher. It’s like being a scientist, only way harder. 

Then let’s talk about how you ended up in court today.

1. Do you know why you are testifying

1. I’m here to talk about Scanlon Screenings. I discovered some shady stuff they were doing, and I reported it. It eventually went public and they fired me. 

1. What’s Scanlon Screenings?

1. It’s a healthcare company that produced a type of covid test strip that was really popular in Midlands. They’ve been in the news a lot lately.

1. How did you start working there?

1. Well, after I left my first job, I got a call about a startup healthcare company focused on COVID tests. I was recruited to work there in March, right as the pandemic was starting. At the time, I counted myself lucky to even have a job.

1. What was your first impression of Scanlon?

1. Everyone was really nice, but it was definitely a big change from what I was used to. Everything was different

1. How were things different there??

1. For one thing, security was really tight. There were cameras everywhere, but my lab wasn’t allowed to know what the other ones were doing. We couldn’t even talk to the other researchers that were processing our data to see the test results. A lot of my work felt like flying blind because we couldn’t check if we were moving in the right direction. 

1. How did the labs run if you couldn’t work with other researchers?

1. My lab manager, Drew Pincus, was the only one who could give us feedback. I actually reported my worries about the covid tests to him and the COO of Scanlon Emerson Moon. 

Then let’s talk about what might have been wrong with Scanlon’s covid tests

1. Why were you worried?

1. Well, I was concerned about the tests when I noticed that the COVID data coming out of the CDC didn’t match what I was seeing in my lab.

1. Would you recognize that CDC data and your lab’s data if I showed them to you?

1. Yes I would

Approaching OC and the witness in turn with exhibits 10 and 11, and exhibit 10 is preadmitted

1. What is it I’ve just handed to you

1. Yes

1. Are they fair and accurate copies?

1. yes

Your honor we offer 11 into evidence

1. What about these documents made you suspicious?

1. Well, here we have COVID positivity rates in the same county. This data is from Scanlon, and this data is from the CDC. The data from Scanlon said that fewer people were getting COVID than this public data from the CDC. If both these charts are accurate, it’s possible that Scanlon's covid tests were telling people that they didn’t have COVID when they did. 

1. What did you think of this?

1. At first I didn’t want to believe it. I was horrified. My mind immediately went to my parents. If I walked into their house thinking I didn’t have COVID, and I did… I don’t even want to think about it. 

1. What did you do after seeing that data?

1. I’m a scientist, so I had to test it myself. I got Covid tests from the store and compared them to Scanlon’s. Our tests were wrong 50 percent of the time. 50 percent. So I reported what I knew to my lab manager and the COO Emerson Moon. They said they’d look into it or something… but they never got back to me.

1. So if they never got back to you, why were scanlon’s covid tests in the news?

1. Well, around that same time, I got this letter from the company's investors asking for information.

 Approaching OC and the witness in turn with what has been preadmitted as exhibit 12 
What have I just handed to you?

1. The letter

1. What did this letter tell you?

1. It was asking for anything I knew about upper management or Scanlon that was suspicious or damaging. It said I’d be rewarded if I told them what I knew. 

1. What did you do after seeing this letter?

1. I told them. I told them about the tests, about how dangerous what Scanlon was doing actually was. Obviously I wanted that reward, but, honestly it also just felt like the right thing to do. I was worried about how Scanlon had covered up this kind of thing in the past. 

Then let’s talk about Scanlon’s history with reporting issues.

1. How did they cover things up in the past?

1. When I first started working at Scanlon, there was this other researcher who asked our lab manager who to talk to if something went wrong in the lab. He said “sounds like a great way to lose your job” and the next week she was gone. Fired, transferred, I don’t know. I never saw her again. 

1. Did this happen to anyone else?

1. Yeah. There was another person in my lab, Sam Paglia. She wanted to send out ineffective tests for processing to see what would happen. I told Moon and my lab manager because I didn’t want ineffective tests out there, and they just fired her then and there. I felt bad, I didn’t know that was going to happen, but after I reported her, they promoted me. 

I want to move back to that letter you mentioned.

1. What happened after you answered that letter?

1. The next day I came into work, and I was called into a meeting with all of management. They told me I was being reassigned to a paper-pushing job. But just two days in I got another letter from Emerson Moon.

enter exhibit 8, what is this

1. A letter from Moon, letting me know I was being fired.

1. Did Emerson Moon give a reason for your termination in the letter?

   1. No… but Moon called me a rat. 

If obj 

24. You told us Emerson Moon fired you in this letter, did he/she give a reason why?

• No .. but moon called me a rat