1) Let me tell you a crazy story. It's consumed 2 years of my life.
As COVID-19 shut down the world in April 2020, I decided to follow the money. I began with a call to a no-name federal contractor who’d somehow landed a $35M deal for masks. Hours later, I’m on a private jet …
As COVID-19 shut down the world in April 2020, I decided to follow the money. I began with a call to a no-name federal contractor who’d somehow landed a $35M deal for masks. Hours later, I’m on a private jet …
2) Robert Stewart, CEO of Federal Government Experts, chartered the jet to oversee delivery of 6 million N95s to the VA (the largest hospital system in the US). These were the terrifying weeks. No vaccine, hospitals overrun, masks the only protection for healthcare workers …
3) I’d asked to tag along because he was charging about $6/mask (normally ~$1). How did he win that deal? Was it price gouging? Also mystifying - he had NO experience importing or selling medical gear, yet he was somehow a crucial piece of the national pandemic response …
4) Data we @ProPublica analyzed revealed a broader trend: Anyone with an email address & an LLC could get multi million-dollar contracts for supplies - masks, gloves, test kits, etc - with no real vetting. The Trump admin, having failed to prepare & respond, was panic buying …
5) With most travel limited, I asked concerned @ProPublica editors to let me go. It took some convincing. I shared a working theory: Profiteers were filling the vacuum left by the failure to prepare and the official US response was to just throw money like chum into the sea …
6) Finally, I got the go ahead. Pro tip: If ever in the course of an investigation you are invited aboard a private jet by the subject of said investigation, I highly recommend you do all you can to get on that damn plane. I digress …
7) We flew DC>Georgia>Chicago and back, meeting various characters, including his parents? The masks had vanished, he’d claim. But more were coming. Then they’d disappear. I began to wonder if he’d lied about the whole thing, if he was committing a federal crime before my eyes
8) It would take time to unravel the mess, but I reported what I knew on May 1, 2020. Federal investigations began immediately. Editors cleared me to travel, so long as I quarantined on either side. I was just getting started … propublica.org/article/how-pr…
9) A kind reader sent me an N95, which I preserved for a year. Over the next year, I found myself staking out secret warehouses, including in San Antonio, where men using TaskRabbit and Venmo repackaged subpar Chinese masks so they'd fly with hospitals ... propublica.org/article/he-rem…
10) At a separate warehouse in Houston, a former telemarketer with a history of fraud allegations paid temp workers to prepare plastic mini soda bottles to sell them to FEMA as real test kits. They were sent to all 50 states and territories but were totally useless …
11) In Los Angeles, I met a plucky juicer salesman who’d filled a suitcase with cash to buy masks from a fly-by-night LLC already made rich by the Trump administration. The company owners had a history of fraud allegations, including selling bogus male sex enhancement pills …
12) Then there were my many encounters with ganjapreneurs and general marijuana enthusiasts who had, somewhat impressively, pivoted from weed into the medical supply space to get, like, totally rich, man …
13) Over two years I’d zig-zag across the U.S. chronicling profiteers & fraudsters. Many were charged with crimes, others not. I’d find that a sort of religious adherence to free markets and unfettered capitalism - and greed - frustrated the pandemic response at every turn …
14) I dug in further to determine how we ended up in this mess to begin with and talked to the people who tried to better prepare us, such as @RickABright. But we didn't listen.
15) That failure cascaded down to states, cities and individual hospitals who competed for the same supplies and struggled to navigate this greedy underbelly. As the pandemic dragged on, ludicrous scams gave way to good old fashioned corporate opportunism …
16) I stitch it all together in my forthcoming book PANDEMIC, INC.: Chasing the Capitalists and Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick.
It’s out April 12. Preorder here: simonandschuster.com/books/Pandemic…
It’s out April 12. Preorder here: simonandschuster.com/books/Pandemic…
17) I know we all have pandemic fatigue. Believe me, I considered this throughout the writing. I do not wish to depress us further. But this is the part of the story you might not have heard - of those who seized advantage of our vacuum of leadership and toxic politics …
18) It is an artifact of the pandemic, yes, but really a story about us, about America. My hope is it’s a warning to future generations and a blueprint of exactly what not to do when faced with such a crisis. I hope you’ll give it a read. simonandschuster.com/books/Pandemic…
19) And if you value this sort of journalism, please also consider donating to @ProPublica, the non-profit investigative outlet that prioritizes stories of impact in the public interest and is willing to send yours truly into the madness.
donate.propublica.org/give/141278/#!…
donate.propublica.org/give/141278/#!…
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