A California executive has copped to concocting a COVID-19 testing swindle, duping investors with tall tales of a revolutionary finger-prick blood test, the Justice Department announced yesterday. Keith Berman, the 70-year-old honcho of medical device outfit Decision Diagnostics Corp., entered a guilty plea on multiple charges, acknowledging his role in a scheme that netted millions from investors riding the pandemic fear wave.
Berman, who was in a financial pickle as the pandemic loomed, saw a golden opportunity to "raise millions" for the struggling DECN; however, his big pitch was a sham, an invented 15-second COVID-19 test that didn't exist. Berman's fake confidence tricked investors while he lined his pockets and used company cash for his own lavish needs, all while falsely claiming not a dime went into his coffers. The biotech CEO escalated the deceit, telling tales of imminent FDA approval for a test that couldn't pass muster with clinical trials.
The scam artist didn't stop at false press releases and grandiose investor calls; Berman used pseudonyms to spread his bogus success stories across internet forums, dressed in the fabricated credibility of a fake persona to drown out cries of fraud and silence the skeptics with threats of legal wrath. His web of lies extended to the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), where he blatantly threw sand in the gears of their investigation with a series of menacing yet fictitious correspondences aimed at the agency's top brass.
On April 12, 2024, Berman faces a reckoning with the possibility of 20 years in federal prison for his misdeeds. Though his fate rests in a judge's gavel after weighing guidelines and statutory factors, Berman's admission to one count each of securities fraud, wire fraud, and obstruction of an official proceeding was a stark turnaround for the once blustering executive as he awaits sentencing.
The complex case, a tapestry of deception and hubris expertly unraveled by the USPIS and FBI, was shepherded by trial attorneys from the Fraud Section of the Justice Department's Criminal Division.
