![]() “Why wouldn’t they send me a letter and say stop using it? They didn’t,” he said of the Panamanian business. “In fact, the address listed by this individual in the purchase order that you provided for our review is an address which has not been used by UETA Inc.since 2004,” said Groisman, adding the company “will pursue all of its rights and remedies under the law to protect its business name, goodwill and reputation.”Īsked why he provided that address, Chaffee said “it might have been a mistake.” Meanwhile, Wetter insisted his company’s name wasn’t meant to be deceptive. ![]() Gabriel Groisman, an attorney for the legitimate UETA Inc., said the company isn’t involved in the sale of N95 masks and noted that Wetter “is not an employee, affiliate or representative of UETA Inc.” That location was initially provided for the purchase orders, but Chaffee later changed the address to a building in Florida that previously housed the corporate offices of the Panamanian company. they had pledged to send hundreds of millions of dollars was actually an unlicensed trading company headquartered in the San Diego bungalow of its owner, Gary Wetter. When the Kuceras first dove headlong into the mask deal, they were encouraged to learn the seller was UETA Inc., which they believed was the Panamanian company that owns duty-free stores at airports across the country and has active business licenses in California. The following day, Chaffee informed them that a total of 300 million masks had actually sold a day earlier as he offered up 150 million more. When they first tried to make a deal in early April, Kucera said Chaffee told the group they just missed out on buying 75 million masks, which he had just sold for $3.75 each. In late March, John Kucera said the owner of one of the stalled development properties connected him and his business partner Steve Sannikov, of River North, to a buyer from Nashville named Michael Haley who Kucera said was being financed by a billionaire from India. A neighbor of a longtime friend in California ultimately introduced them to Jon Chaffee, a businessman from Orange County who claimed he had access to millions of masks. That’s when he and his wife, a publicist who served as a spokeswoman to Amara Enyia’s unsuccessful mayoral bid in Chicago last year, started hearing they could get their hands on PPE. John Kucera had been consulting on a handful of major real estate developments in Nashville, but the projects stalled in January as the pandemic took hold in the U.S. Federal authorities have started aggressively prosecuting scams involving N95 masks, targeting counterfeiters and price gougers, and probing companies that have failed to deliver on government contracts. Their experience is by no means unique as the market for personal protective equipment, or PPE, has devolved into a hotbed for fraud and profiteering. We had no idea how crazy it was going to be.” Feds aggressively target potential fraud “We got involved because we really wanted to help people. “It was chaos, but we had heard we could get supply,” Kucera said. Kucera admits mistakes were made as they attempted to cash in on the crisis, though he insists they jumped into the fray for the right reasons. ![]() The Kuceras eventually secured thousands of masks, but many have gone unsold and are now sitting in warehouses as potential buyers have grown leery of new sellers in a market that’s been upended by grifters and counterfeiters. Their experience offers a lesson to anyone seeking to delve into the PPE market, the couple said. ![]()
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