MADISON, Wis. — The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection says a company that was claiming to provide pop-up COVID-19 testing with quick turnaround times for results has been fined thousands of dollars for misleading advertising.
Officials say Aleya Siyaj and Akbar Syed, who were operating Center for COVID Control, LLC, will have to pay fines totaling $22,500 to Dane County after it was revealed they did not follow through on promises they made to people about test results.
From December 2, 2020, to January 21, 2022, Center for COVID Control, LLC operated a total of 25 COVID testing sites — including six in Dane County — that claimed to use RT-PCR tests and promised to email results to people who took the tests within 48 hours.
The company, which was based in Illinois, saw its headquarters raided by the FBI in January and had an “F” rating from the Better Business Bureau before it closed its pop-up locations in Madison. At the time, the company said it was a temporary closure to allow them to retrain employees, but the pop-up locations never returned.
The company blamed the high demand for COVID-19 testing at the time for its struggles in providing results in a timely fashion. But DATCP determined the promises to get results to people within 48 hours amounted to false advertising.
“It’s unfair to consumers when businesses make promises they are unable to follow through on, but even more so when that business involves public health,” DACTP Division of Trade and Consumer Protection Administrator Lara Sutherlin said in a statement this week. “It’s likely that many individuals who received tests from Center for COVID Control were attracted by its commitment to results within 48 hours. Dropping the ball on a service as vital as COVID-19 tests is unacceptable to consumers.”
In addition to failing to deliver the test results as promised, the company is also being investigated in multiple states for possibly falsifying results they did send out.
COPYRIGHT 2022 BY CHANNEL 3000. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.
