The Big Grift - Part whatever

The offer to the Federal Emergency Management Agency sounded promising: A Silicon Valley engineer said that he could deliver thousands of ventilators from manufacturers across China to help hospitals treat coronavirus patients.

The engineer was asked for more details. Within 12 hours, he responded with a 28-page digital catalog of medical supplies at his disposal, including protective masks and goggles.

But there were also a series of caveats: Interested buyers had to sign a contract within four hours of receiving a quote and pay the entirety of the order upfront. “Nonnegotiable,” the catalog said. And the engineer, Yaron Oren-Pines, had no apparent background in procuring medical equipment.

  NYT

You might think all that would be seen as a huge red flag.

Federal officials passed on the vendor’s information to senior officials in New York and, within days, the state struck a deal to buy 1,450 ventilators from Mr. Oren-Pines for $86 million, one of the largest contracts for medical supplies since the outbreak.

[...]

In a matter of days, a bank had frozen funds that the state had wired to Mr. Oren-Pines because it found a transaction from his account suspicious. State officials were then warned by Mr. Oren-Pines and his business partners of possible shipping complications and were told that the ventilators might have to be routed through Israel, where they said they had connections.

Before long, Mr. Oren-Pines and his partners began accusing the state of breach of contract. State officials later tried to send inspectors to confirm the stockpile in China; that effort was unsuccessful, and the contract was terminated.

[...]

Without a coordinated federal approach to distributing medical equipment based on need, states were left to fend for themselves, bidding against one another amid a global shortage.

[...]

The voided contract illustrated the desperate measures New York took at the height of the pandemic to procure precious medical equipment, as officials scrambled to find as many of the 40,000 ventilators that the state believed it needed to stave off a catastrophe. As the state scoured the globe for supplies, it eschewed competitive bidding protocols to expedite acquisitions and resorted to vendors that had never done business with the state.

Another failure of preparation for the eventuality of a pandemic which experts had been warning about for years.

Federal officials, in fact, also referred Mr. Oren-Pines to New Jersey. But officials in that state said they were troubled by a series of warning signs, and declined to procure equipment from Mr. Oren-Pines.

[...]

New Jersey officials saw Mr. Oren-Pines’s insistence for upfront payment as problematic, and they balked at the price of the ventilators and how long it would take for them to be delivered.

[...]

Mr. Oren-Pines’s offer to help was originally fielded by a team of inexperienced young volunteers recruited at FEMA by President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Boy, that name just pops up over and over in stories of federal failure.

New York officials said they were told by an official assigned to the Department of Health and Human Services that the federal government had vetted Mr. Oren-Pines, and that a consulting firm had conducted a video inspection of the ventilators in China.

[...]

A Trump administration official involved in the White House coronavirus task force defended the vetting process of leads that were funneled through FEMA, but said that states should still be doing their own due diligence.

Then why is Jared wasting his time? States shouldn't have to do that if the federal government claims to have already done it. States can't trust the federal government? That's your rationalization?

[Oren-Pines] is also a co-founder of a networking company called Legasus Networks; its other co-founders, Douglas Lee and Thao Tran, said the firm had nothing to do with ventilators. Mr. Tran said Mr. Oren-Pines was the type of person who would jump at an opportunity if he spotted one.

“His personality is he will go take a chance and do any kind of business outside his field,” he said.

Perfectly Trumpian.

[H]is offer was received by Kushner-appointed FEMA volunteers who were drawn from venture capital and private equity firms, and had little to no experience with government procurement procedures.

Venture capitalists chosen to handle a medical disaster. Sure. Why not?

Last weekend, Mr. Oren-Pines emailed New York officials describing the personal and financial fallout from the botched ventilator deal, pleading with them to issue a statement to clear his name.

In a reference to the BuzzFeed News story, he said he was being victimized by a “fictional/fake story” about his connection to the White House, and that he and his family were now receiving threats and anti-Semitic messages.

[...]

In the email to New York officials, Mr. Oren-Pines said, “What has happened to me personally over the past few days is worse than death itself.” He said the sudden cancellation of the order had left him and his partners “with tens of millions of dollars in liabilities and contracts.”

“In Israel, I am called a traitor and accused of a Sting operation against NYS,” he wrote. “I have done Nothing wrong! All I wanted was to help New York State and in the process got thrown under a bus.”

A hard lesson learned, then: Don't jump at "any chance to do any kind of business outside your field."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.