A powerful California union that claimed to have discovered 39 million masks for healthcare workers fighting the novel coronavirus was duped in an elaborate scam uncovered by FBI investigators, the U.S. attorney’s office said Friday.
U.S. Atty. Scott Brady of the Western District of Pennsylvania said FBI agents and prosecutors stumbled onto the arrangement while looking into whether they could intercept the masks for the Federal Emergency Management Agency under the Defense Production Act.
The federal government has been quietly seizing supplies across the country, taking the orders placed by hospitals and clinics and not publicly reporting where the products are being routed.
But in this case, there was no warehouse, and there were no masks to seize.
Brady said investigators tracked the tip back to a Pittsburgh businessman, who said he had been working with the union to secure millions of masks, some of which were purported to be sitting in a Georgia warehouse. Brady said the businessman had been using WhatsApp to connect with a broker in Australia and a supplier in Kuwait, who are both now the target of a federal investigation.
At one point, the Australian broker told the middleman in Pittsburgh that 2 million masks were located in a warehouse in Georgia and that the product had been inspected by a particular certification company.
That, Brady said, “was also part of the ruse.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-11/coronavirus-seiu-masks-fraud-fbi