Fillakit LLC, which won a $10.2 million contract in early May from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to produce fluid-filled COVID-19 test tubes, used plastic tubes made for bottling soda instead, according to an investigative report published Thursday by ProPublica.
Additionally, Fillakit, formed by a self-described real estate agent who has repeatedly been accused of fraudulent practices over the past two decades, has been assembling the tubes in unsterile conditions in a Texas warehouse, according to The Wall Street Journal.
FEMA has received more than 3 million test tubes from Fillakit, and approved them all though officials in New York, Texas, New Mexico and New Jersey told ProPublica they can’t use the testing material.
“We are still trying to identify an alternative use,” said Janelle Fleming, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Health.
Former workers who spoke with the Journal said workers at the Texas warehouse did not wear protective gear all the time and dust and debris contaminated the assembly process.
“The environment is not clean at all and certainly not sterile,” Teresa Bosworth-Green, a retired science teacher who worked at Fillakit for about two weeks, told the Journal.
More than 300 new federal contractors have provided supplies related to COVID-19, with about 13 percent of total federal government spending on pandemic-related contracts going to first-time vendors, including Fillakit.
“It’s outrageous enough that they [FEMA] ordered something to test for COVID-19, and they got something that can’t be used to test for COVID-19,” Richard Loeb, a contract law expert at the University of Baltimore, told ProPublica. “I still am a little bit troubled as to why FEMA accepted them. ... They may have stupidly accepted something that was nonconforming.”
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.