It’s the story of one of the highest grossing tweets in history, for sure. But also a scam with many gray areas, as relates BuzzFeed. Yaron Oren-Pines, an electrical engineer in Silicon Valley, has been paid $ 69.1 million by New York State, or about 63 million euros, to provide respirators to deal with the current crisis. The problem is, he pocketed that money … and no fan was delivered. This stranger “won” this contract by simply responding to a tweet from Donald Trump on March 27.
That day, the US president in his own way on Twitter encourages Ford and General Motors to produce respirators in their factories to then distribute them to hospitals. Yaron Oren-Pines, who then only had 75 subscribers on the social network, wrote: “We can provide care respirators. Have someone call me URGENT ”. Many details are not yet known, but the engineer will sign a contract with New York State three days later to provide 1,450 respirators for $ 69.1 million, or $ 47,656 per unit. This contract will be terminated one month later, without any of the products ordered being delivered.
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White House denial
“A large part of the money” in question would nevertheless have been recovered, assured BuzzFeed Heather Groll, spokesperson for the General Service Office in New York. She declined to answer several other questions on this matter. “This person (Yaron Oren-Pines, editor’s note) was recommended to us by the White House’s coronavirus working group because they were also doing business with him,” says the new administration. -Yorkese. Claims denied by the entourage of Mike Pence, the US vice-president, after the publication of the BuzzFeed article. “The White House coronavirus task force was never informed of this contract and did not participate in it at all,” according to a statement. The main stakeholder, Yaron Oren-Pines, has not commented on the matter.
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