The U.S. Dept. of Justice announced that Marc Schessel of SCWorx was indicted for charges related to an alleged COVID-19 test scheme.
Schessel, the former CEO of the New York-based company, was charged with two counts of securities fraud for his alleged participation in a scheme to mislead investors about SCWorx’s procurement of COVID-19 rapid test kits in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Court documents alleged that Schessel caused SCWorx to issue multiple public statements claiming the company was buying and reselling at least 48 million COVID-19 test kits, despite knowing that such statements were false and misleading. In April 2020 — just a month after the COVID-19 pandemic took hold of the world — Schessel executed a supply agreement with an unnamed Australian company to obtain 2 million COVID-19 test kits per week for six months, starting on April 24, 2020.
The agreement was made based on an understanding that SCWorx had FDA’s…