What's up guys and welcome back to wall street millennial on this channel, we cover everything related to stocks and investing the covet era of 2020 was devastating for small businesses, many of whom were forced to shut down and file for bankruptcy. To add insult to injury, cyber attack and phishing scams also increased significantly in what came to be known as the scandemic. According to the fbi, cyber crime reports increased by 69 in 2020 as compared to 2019., with people stressed about working from home or having lost their jobs altogether. Scammers saw this as a huge opportunity to exploit people's general anxiety today, we're looking at an alleged scam that, if true may be one of the most disgraceful frauds of the pandemic.

We're talking about the center for covet control, a company which was founded in 2020 and claims to offer free covent tests. They operate 300 testing locations and claim to have 3 000 employees in the us. But recent revelations suggest that this company could be a scam. They have 26 reviews on the better business bureau and the overwhelming majority of them are one star.

The lowest possible rating people are complaining that they didn't receive their test results and that the inside the lab doesn't look professional at all. Also they offer tests for free. So how do they make money? On january 13th, the company abruptly said that they would pause their testing activities for a week, claiming that this is because of unusually high patient demand. But things are not looking good for the company, as the oregon department of justice recently opened an investigation in this video, we'll look at the covent control center, how they make money and whether or not it is a massive scam.

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So what is the center for covet control? It is a national chain of covid testing sites which have popped up all over the us over the past couple years. The first thing you might notice is the company name striking similarity to the center for disease control, which is a government agency, but there is no affiliation between the two entities. Another thing that's noteworthy is that they offer free covet tests, both rapid and pcr tests. This is quite surprising.

Traditional pharmacies like walgreens and cvs generally charge in excess of 100 for pcr tests, so how's the center for covetcontrol able to offer tests for free. They have a website called centerforcovetcontrol.org. It's an extremely simple website with very little information. They claim to be a privately held illinois-based company that operates 300 testing sites with 3 000 employees.

They partner with a company called doctors clinical laboratory to perform the tests. Doctor's clinical laboratory is a small lab in illinois, with 35 reviews on google. The vast majority of these reviews are one star. Most of the complaints revolve around not receiving their test results when promised or never receiving them at all.

One reviewer said that the qr code that they sent him with a test result took him to a static website. Page with negative written on it, even more damning is a report from a florida. Local media outlet called wink news. They interviewed customers of center for coveted control, who claimed to have received negative test results from the company before they even took the test.

They also sent their reporters to talk to an employee at the testing site. The employee was wearing scrubs but admitted that he was not a registered nurse and has zero medical training. If we look at some of the other tabs from the website, we can find some even crazier things. They supposedly have a workplace testing solution where they can test employees for companies embedded in the page is a link to a youtube video.

The video has 4 400 views, but only 6 likes, which suggests that the views may be fake. The man in the video appears to be an actor. He has a british accent, even though the company does not operate in the uk. Also, he refers to the occupational safety and health administration as osha, while almost everybody in the medical industry calls it asha.

As a single word. The description of the youtube video is simply the transcript of the video. There is no contact information or anything of that nature, which is highly unusual for a corporate video things get really weird. When you look at the about section of their youtube channel, the channel was created in 2014 and the description reads as follows: ali janu is a channel for education, learning and fun family friendly, toddler, learning, videos and educational videos.

Unquote. The youtube channel also has a link to a public instagram account with the handle. Ali.Juna ali appears to be a middle school age kid and he hasn't posted anything in almost a year. Needless to say, this channel is highly suspicious according to their website.

The center for covet control's founder and ceo is a woman by the name of aliyah siyage. If you search this name on linkedin, you can see two different profiles. One of them is founder and ceo of center for kovic control. The other says ceo of bullseye acts lounge.

Both of them say they are based in barrington hills, illinois, the one that says founder of center for covey control also lists that she is the ceo of bullseye acts lounge. So they appear to be the same person. It is not immediately clear why she would have two different linkedin profiles: bullseye axe, lounge is a place. You can go to throw axes.

It's really weird that the founder of an axe. Lounge would start a coveted testing company, but we don't even know if these linkedin profiles are real. It's very possible that this is a fake picture and aliyah siage is just an alias. The center for kovic control claims to operate 300 locations across 29 states.

Many of these locations are in tiny hole in the wall, shops or trailers, but still it would have taken tens of millions of dollars of investment in a highly sophisticated organization to open all of these. So what is this company really up to and how do they plan to make a return on their investment customers who have taken tests at the center for covi control, say they were required to give pictures of their driver's licenses as well as their health insurance information? A google review of doctor's clinical lab, which appears to be affiliated with ccc, says that his insurance company sent him a 300 bill associated with the test, even though they claim to be free, it's possible that they just make money by billing. The insurance companies. However, according to their promotional materials, they will provide tests, even if you don't have insurance, if they're, not billing, the insurance companies, how can they make money in a worst case scenario, they could be selling the driver's license data to fraudsters, who will use it for identity Theft to be clear, there's no direct evidence that this is the case, but many previous customers are concerned that this could be and given how shady and opaque the company is, how can you blame them for fearing the worst on january 13th, they put out a statement Saying they are temporarily closing their locations because, unusually high patient demand has stressed their staffing resources, they're pausing operations, so they have time to bring on and train additional staff.

This is already a weird explanation: why can't they hire new staff while their locations are operating and given how short staffed they claim to be? You would expect to see them advertising many new job openings on the career section of their website. They have three open positions: kovitz, cleaner data entry and customer service. All these descriptions say the exact same thing enter information about this job vacancy here be sure to include both educational and experiential requirements of the position, as well as details about the type of person you are looking for unquote. This is pretty obviously an excerpt from a generic website template an internal company memo obtained by usa today gives a more realistic explanation.

It says: quote: increase scrutiny by the media into operations of our collection sites. Unquote over the past week, which, along with consumer complaints, quote, resulted in various state health departments and even the oregon department of justice taking a keen interest in our company. Unquote, multiple states have opened up investigations into the center for coveted control, they're, probably shutting down their locations to prepare for possible litigation. It's not just this.

One company state, attorneys general across the country, are investigating numerous pop-up covet testing companies that appear to be scamming patients. The reason that ccc has gotten so much attention in the media is because of its large number of locations and numerous red flags, the company's youtube channel, would be comical if the situation wasn't so serious covet is a serious disease if they're giving faulty test results. This could be a serious public health risk. If there is any abusive customer data, the risk to consumers could be immense.

The center for cova control is one of the most interesting and, concerning cases we've covered on this channel, the fact that they've opened 300 locations suggests a high level of funding and sophistication. The sophistication can make the organization all the more dangerous if they are doing anything nefarious behind the scenes. If you need to take a covet test for any reason, it's probably best to go to an established pharmacy chain like walgreens or cvs. With these new pop-up testing.

Centers, you could easily end up being scammed, alright guys that wraps it up for this video. What do you think about the center for coveted control? Do you think it's a scam, let us know in the comment section below also make sure to subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications as we'll be sure to update you on any new developments in this story. As always, thank you so much for watching and we'll see in the next one wall. Street millennial signing out.