According to state records, Andrei Doroshin, the group’s 22-year-old CEO, incorporated a company in December called Vax Populi Inc. – a riff from the Latin phrase vox populi, which means “people’s voice”. The incorporation request was dated December 9. Garrow said WHY the city was unaware of PFC’s lucrative aspirations at the time.
In several interviews, Doroshin, a neuroscience graduate student at Drexel, has repeatedly refused to say who is investing in the operation.
“If it is our financing, and our financing is providing a service to the city at a loss, what is happening now, what do you care?” Doroshin said.
The city’s decision to stop working with the PFC depended on the group’s updated privacy policy, said Garrow, who “could allow the organization to sell the data collected through the PFC’s pre-registration website” – although the city said it did not have evidence that the data was sold.
“[F]or whether the PFC made these changes without discussion with the city is extremely worrying, ”he said.
The pre-registration site became a source of turmoil last week after WHYY said the city and the start-up were not working together on the initial sign-up page, as they initially announced they would. Days later, the city launched its own COVID registration site. The Department of Health indicated that it would work to consolidate information from all existing registrations, including those administered by the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium and Acme Markets.
After months of unprofitable, city-funded testing operations, the pivot for a mass vaccination program represented a considerable potential gain for the organization.
And money was supposed to be an open matter among the team.
Five former PFC volunteers and staff members, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Doroshin and other executives had spoken openly about profiting from the vaccine in recent months.
“They didn’t even boast about how they were helping the community,” said a former volunteer. “They were bragging about how they were going to get rich.”
Doroshin did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Monday.
In recent interviews, the young CEO said he was trying to turn the COVID-19 vaccination program into a franchise similar to McDonald’s that he could sell from city to city.
In a previous interview with WHYY, Philly Fighting COVID officials argued that a for-profit entity was required to charge insurers for vaccine reimbursements, a statement that is clearly false in a city with several non-profit healthcare providers. In a separate interview last week, Doroshin said the group needed the status to dramatically increase vaccination sites without the financial constraints of a nonprofit organization.