Philly Fighting COVID CEO agrees to pay $30K to city vaccine services, delete residents’ personal data

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced a settlement Friday with the founder and CEO of Philly Fighting COVID — the inexperienced organization whose failed coronavirus vaccine partnership with the city last year led to national embarrassment — banning him from working with charities in the commonwealth and requiring him to destroy any personal information he collected from those preregistering for the jab.

Shapiro is also seeking $30,000 in restitution from the organization and its founder, Andrei Doroshin. That money will be distributed to organizations providing COVID-19 testing and vaccination to disadvantaged communities in Philadelphia, Shapiro said in a news release. If Doroshin fails to pay the sum by Sept. 5, he will be charged an additional $30,000 in costs and penalties.

Shapiro’s consent decree — which awaits court approval — alleges Doroshin violated Pennsylvania consumer protection, charitable solicitation, and nonprofit corporation laws. Under its terms, Doroshin and his colleagues would be barred for the next 10 years from governing, controlling, administering, or possessing charitable assets or soliciting charitable donations in Pennsylvania.

Doroshin would also be prevented from receiving financial benefits from insurance companies, government agencies, or third parties from personal information obtained through Philly Fighting COVID’s preregistration software, COVIDReadi. After a court approves Shapiro’s consent decree, Doroshin will have 90 days to dissolve Philly Fighting COVID Inc.

» READ MORE: The city trusted a group of ‘college kids’ to lead its vaccine rollout. But Philly Fighting COVID was full of red flags from the start.

“Mr. Doroshin put people’s privacy at risk under the guise of serving as a nonprofit, and he is now being held accountable for those actions,” Shapiro said in a statement. “If Doroshin or any of his associates from Philly Fighting COVID violate this order, my office will not hesitate to act.”

According to Shapiro’s office, they would be liable for more than $700,000 in penalties and costs for violating the order.

In a statement, Mayor Jim Kenney thanked Shapiro for holding Doroshin accountable.

“As we’ve said previously, working with Mr. Doroshin and Philly Fighting COVID was a mistake,” Kenney said. “Over the past 13 months, I’m proud that Philadelphia has become one of the most vaccinated cities in the country. … Our administration remains committed to seeing our great city through the pandemic, to improving the racial and economic equity of vaccinations, and continuing the level of transparency that the public deserves.”

The Philly Fighting COVID start-up was run by a group of mostly white, self-described “college kids” with minimal to no health qualifications.

Shapiro’s complaint outlines how in 2020, Philly Fighting COVID began soliciting donations from the public, writing on its site that “90% of our proceeds go directly to our testing operation. No donations are used for compensation,” but that the organization eventually began commingling the nonprofit’s assets with its for-profit branch. Though the group claimed it was a “certified 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization,” the IRS had never recognized that status, the complaint states.

In the summer of 2020, the city’s health department made available $194,234 in funding and entered into a contract with Philly Fighting COVID for testing. But the group suspended its testing operations before the contract was over, the complaint states, and Doroshin set his salary as the CEO of the organization’s for-profit arm at $200,000 per year.

In January 2021, the organization — using on all documents the name of its for-profit arm, Vax Populi — was granted clearance to run Philadelphia’s first mass vaccination site at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, the complaint states.

But by the end of the month, that partnership imploded as Philadelphia severed ties with Doroshin and Philly Fighting COVID after the nonprofit group failed to disclose its switch to a for-profit business and privacy policy, which described how data collected by residents preregistering for the coronavirus vaccine could be sold.

Doroshin, who could not be reached for comment, previously said he never intended to sell personal health data collected by Philly Fighting COVID’s registration site. There has been no indication that Vax Populi ever sold the information it collected from more than 60,000 people, Shapiro’s complaint said.

The dissolved partnership between the group and the city led to a slew of embarrassing national headlines, reports that Doroshin had pocketed vaccine doses from the clinic for his friends, political finger-pointing, the resignation of a deputy health commissioner, scrutiny of racial equity in the city’s vaccine distribution, and questions over how the Drexel University graduate student’s nascent group rose to power.

» READ MORE: City and Philly Fighting COVID coordinated for months before scandal that was blamed on ‘acting in a hurry,’ emails show

Philadelphia Magazine reported in December that Doroshin and his father, Serge Doroshin, founded Vax21, a company operating vaccine clinics in multiple states, including New York and Georgia. According to the report, after inquiries about Vax21 and its data collection process, the Georgia state health department barred the group from receiving or administering the vaccine in the state.

“With the pandemic in full swing, we as a company have made it our priority to administer as many COVID-19 vaccines as possible,” Vax21′s website read on Friday. “WE ARE CURRENTLY NOT OFFERING COVID VACCINATIONS.”