NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — At the height of the pandemic in the spring, New York scrambled to find hospital supplies and other equipment to fight the coronavirus.
The New York Times reports the state and city rushed into $1.1 billion in deals to get those supplies, and now they're fighting to get much of that money back, claiming some of the vendors didn't deliver on time or at all.
According to the report, the state made deals with vendors that had never done this type of work before, including a used car salesman, a shoe importor, and a company that sold sex toys on Amazon.
"They said that because the federal government didn't step in to supply ventilators and other equipment they had to do it on their own and they had never done this sort of thing before," New York Times investigative reporter Michael Rothfeld told WCBS 880's Lynda Lopez. "And the normal channels, like big companies that you might expect to get such things from, didn't have them, so a lot of people came out of the woodwork. They said they had connections to China, through importing things like clothing."
One of the companies which received millions in funds, called Please Me L.L.C., sold some medical devices, such as blood pressure cuffs, but also sex toys, lingerie and even children's books.
"They said they could sell ventilators to the state and the state ended up paying them a deposit of $12.5 million for 1,000 ventilators which never came," Rothfeld said. "Both sides sort of dispute who's at fault, but right now the state's out $12.5 million for that and there's a number of examples like that."
As for recooperating those funds, Rothfeld said right now the state is asking for the money back on items that were not delivered. The Times reports the city found itself in similar circumstances where they tried to get out of deals to save money after being told the shipments were being delayed.
"So some of the vendors are upset," Rothfeld said. "They're talking to them, they're asking for the money back, they're negotiating, they're trying to sometimes make deals for other things where they could get other things in return for their money."
In one case, the city has sued a company in Florida that was started by a former luxury used car sales manager and his girlfriend over ventilators that were never delivered.
Rothfeld tells Lopez that both Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio suspended some of their normal procurement rules, which includes competitive bidding and reviews by the state and city comptrollers, in an effort to acquire some of these items.
"They had to move so quickly, so they suspended those rules and they were able to just enter those contracts without doing those things," Rothfeld said.
Since items such as ventilators were in such high demand from sellers in China, the state and city also had to move quick to make sure they didn't lose out to other buyers.
As for the reason for these risky deals, Rothfeld said, "They said people were dying and the projections of how many people were going to die were even higher than they ended up being and because the federal government, according to them sort of abandoned its responsibility to provide things like that, they had to step into the breach and if they hadn't moved quickly people might've gone without ventilators and other items and more people would've died."
See Rothfeld's full reporting, here.