PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The CEO of Philly Fighting COVID (PFC), which was forced to cut ties with the city over vaccine distribution mishandling, has agreed to destroy all personal data collected from people who pre-registered for its vaccine clinics, the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office said.
The AG's Office said Andrei Doroshin has agreed to a settlement that would require him to destroy all private data he gathered and would bar him from running a charitable organization in Pennsylvania for 10 years. A judge needs to approve the settlement.
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PFC led a mass vaccination campaign at the Pennsylvania Convention Center at the beginning of the vaccine rollout. It was initially founded in the early stages of the pandemic to provide PPE, then coronavirus testing. But by January 2021, the city cut ties with the organization after it learned it had shifted from a nonprofit to a for-profit group without notifying the city.
There was a concern that the organization could sell data it got from the thousands of people who pre-registered for a vaccine.
Amid the fallout, CEO Doroshin, who was a 22-year-old Drexel graduate student at the time, revealed he had taken doses home to administer to his friends — a time when vaccines were limited in distribution.
“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,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said in a statement.
In addition to deleting the data, Shapiro's office said Doroshin cannot financially benefit from the sale of the personal health data PFC collected.
Last year, many questioned why PFC received such a large contract with the city compared to nonprofits serving minority communities. The City of Philadelphia had since admitted it was a “mistake” partnering with PFC.
The settlement says Doroshin must also pay $30,000 in restitution by September, which will be distributed to charitable groups that provide COVID-19 testing and vaccinations to underserved communities in Philadelphia. He faces $700,000 in penalties if he does not oblige.