EvilCorporations.com Investigates  |  Filed: November 20, 2023

CRI Genetics: DNA Lies, Fake Reviews, and a Stolen Story

CRI Genetics hired a paid actor to play a Native American man named “Wayne,” built a fictional story around a real customer who never gave permission, broadcast that video across the internet as a genuine testimonial, and pocketed millions of dollars while the whole thing was a fabricated advertisement from start to finish.

They Built an Empire on Lies About Your DNA

CRI Genetics has sold DNA test kits since at least 2017, offering consumers packages ranging from $99 to $199 (roughly one to two weeks of groceries for an average American family), with some customers paying over $300 (the cost of a month’s worth of gas for many working families). The company raked in a total of $42.8 million (enough to fully fund the annual salaries of over 850 public school teachers) between 2017 and 2021. Every dollar of that revenue was collected on the back of claims the company’s own conduct proves it could never substantiate.

The core product promise was staggering in its ambition: CRI claimed its tests could show consumers “exactly” where their ancestors came from and “exactly” when they arrived there, going back more than 50 generations. CRI claimed an accuracy rate of over 90 percent, and in some ads pushed that number all the way to 99.9 percent. The federal government’s own complaint makes clear that DNA ancestry testing is, by its scientific nature, an estimation — shaped by the size of a company’s reference database, the quality of its algorithm, and the fundamental reality that genes do not map cleanly onto geography.

The FTC’s investigation found CRI did not have the largest or most ethnically diverse DNA reference dataset — falling significantly behind several competitors. That detail alone makes the “most accurate test on the market” claim a flat-out lie. A company cannot claim superiority it has no way to measure because its competitors’ proprietary data is, by definition, unavailable to it.

The Patent That Never Was

CRI’s accuracy claims leaned heavily on the prestige of a “patented DNA analysis algorithm” created by a scientist described as a former apprentice to a Nobel Prize winner. The company ran this claim across its websites, its marketing materials, and the fake review sites it secretly controlled. Regulators confirm: CRI Genetics never obtained a patent for its matching algorithm or software. The patent did not exist. The prestige was borrowed. The authority was manufactured.

This is not a technicality. The patent claim was foundational to the company’s entire marketing identity. CRI used it to justify why its tests were supposedly more accurate than AncestryDNA and 23andMe. Every consumer who paid $99, $199, or $300-plus for a CRI kit partly paid for a credential that was never real. The complaint charges this as a direct violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act.

The Fake Review Network: Two Websites, Zero Independence

CRI ran two websites designed to look like independent consumer watchdog publications. The first, Genetics Digest, presented itself as a publication run by “a team of scientists, researchers, and writers” who had “examined nearly every DNA test in the booming market.” The second, Buyer Ranking, claimed its team called DNA companies pretending to be confused customers just to test their service quality. Both sites claimed to be doing the work a savvy consumer would want done on their behalf. Both sites were secretly owned and operated by CRI Genetics.

CRI bought Google and Bing search ads so that when someone searched “23andMe” or “AncestryDNA” or “DNA testing,” these fake review sites appeared on the first page of results. Consumers who clicked through found professional-looking editorial content, star ratings, and comparisons — all manufactured by the very company being rated. Genetics Digest gave CRI a 4.9 out of 5 stars. Buyer Ranking gave it 4.7 out of 5. CRI set its own score. CRI wrote its own glowing review. Then CRI collected money from people who trusted the review.

When regulators began sniffing around in early 2021, CRI added a disclosure to the Genetics Digest site. The disclosure appeared in very small print, in light gray font, placed just above the site’s prominent title — designed, the complaint alleges, to be overlooked. Even then, the disclosure only said CRI had a “financial connection to” or was “affiliated with” Genetics Digest. It did not say CRI owned the site outright and wrote every word of it. The FTC called this inadequate.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Money Can’t Measure

There is a specific kind of violation buried in this case that no fine will fully address. DNA ancestry testing is not a commodity like a blender or a phone case. People buy these kits for deeply personal reasons: to understand where their families came from, to feel connected to a history that was perhaps severed by slavery, colonization, or displacement, to find living relatives, or to understand their own biology. CRI Genetics knew this. The company built its entire marketing strategy around the emotional weight of identity and belonging. And then it lied about everything.

CRI sold consumers a specific promise: that its “Advanced Ancestry Timeline” would show them “exactly WHEN and WHERE” their ancestors came from, going back more than 50 generations. For someone whose family history was erased by the transatlantic slave trade, for an adoptee searching for biological roots, for an immigrant family trying to understand the homeland they left behind — that “exactly” carries extraordinary moral weight. The federal complaint confirms that this level of precision is scientifically impossible with current DNA testing technology. CRI claimed to deliver something that no company on earth can deliver. It sold certainty where only estimation exists.

Consider the “Wayne” situation. CRI produced a video featuring a man playing a Native American consumer who claimed to have discovered through CRI’s testing that he carries “the oldest DNA found in America.” The character was presented as a real, satisfied customer sharing a genuine experience. He was not. CRI wrote the script. CRI hired the actor. The company loosely based the character’s story on the DNA results of a real customer — a real person whose genetic data CRI held and whose identity CRI drew from without that person’s endorsement or cooperation. That real customer never agreed to be the face of a CRI advertisement. Their most intimate biological information was repurposed for a commercial without their consent.

The fake review network compounds the betrayal further. A person searching online for an honest comparison of DNA testing services was actively deceived by CRI at the search results level. Before they even reached the CRI website, they had already encountered a manufactured consensus designed to make CRI appear to be the independently verified best choice. The system was hermetically sealed against truth: CRI created the fake reviewer, wrote the fake review, placed the fake ad to drive traffic to the fake review, and then collected money from consumers whose decision-making process had been corrupted at every single stage. This was industrial-scale manipulation of trust, executed methodically over at least four years.

Legal Receipts: In Their Own Words

Societal Impact: Who Gets Hurt, and How

Economic Inequality: The Tax on Curiosity

CRI’s pricing structure placed its deception squarely on working- and middle-class consumers. Packages ran from $99 to $199 (equivalent to two to four tanks of gas for many families), with some consumers spending over $300 (close to a month’s worth of internet and cell phone bills for many households). These are not trivial sums for most Americans, and CRI’s entire funnel was designed to extract as much of that money as possible through upsells, false urgency, and checkout dark patterns that charged consumers before they knew their orders were final.

The complaint documents that CRI generated $42.8 million (enough to send over 2,800 students to a public university for a full year) over a five-year period by systematically exploiting the information asymmetry between a corporation and an everyday consumer. The consumer did not know that “99.9% accuracy” was a number pulled from thin air. The consumer did not know that the “independent review” they trusted was written by the company selling the product. The consumer did not know that the trashcan icon in their shopping cart was decorative. The corporation knew all of these things. That is the economic inequality built into this scheme: CRI held all the information and sold a fake version of it.

The complaint also specifically flags additional civil penalties for violations perpetrated against senior citizens and disabled persons — a category the California law treats as aggravated, warranting an extra $2,500 penalty per violation. This signals that regulators believe CRI’s tactics were not uniformly distributed in their harm; they hit the most financially vulnerable and least digitally experienced consumers the hardest.

Public Health: When DNA Lies Have Medical Consequences

CRI’s product line included not just ancestry reports but DNA health and wellness reports that claimed to identify associations between consumers’ genetic markers and medical conditions including lactose intolerance and insulin resistance. These health reports were sold as part of the more expensive package tier. The FTC complaint makes clear that genetic mutations identified in DNA tests are not always expressed — meaning a person with a mutation linked to a condition may never develop that condition. CRI sold health information as a product without adequately communicating this fundamental scientific limitation.

A consumer who received a health report from CRI and believed it to be accurate could make dietary changes, avoid medical consultations, or experience unnecessary anxiety based on findings that the science itself cannot reliably support at the accuracy levels CRI claimed. The complaint notes the inherent limits of this kind of testing: genetic markers associated with traits like insulin resistance or lactose intolerance are statistical associations, not diagnoses. Selling a product that implies otherwise — particularly at claimed accuracy rates of “99.9 percent” — carries real health implications for real people who trusted that number.

The Cost of a Life Metric

What Now? Who’s Watching and What You Can Do

The Regulators On This Case

The following agencies filed or support this action. Flood their public comment channels with your experience if you were a CRI Genetics customer.

Corporate Roles Identified in This Case

The complaint names CRI Genetics, LLC (also operating as OmniPGX), headquartered at 122 Sheldon Street, El Segundo, California 90245. The scientific credibility of the company was publicly attached to the name of Alexei Fedorov, described in CRI’s ads as a “renowned Molecular Geneticist” and former apprentice to Nobel laureate Walter Gilbert — a credential used to sell a patent that did not exist.

What the Government Is Asking the Court to Do

Plaintiffs are seeking a permanent injunction preventing CRI from repeating any of these practices, full consumer restitution for all money acquired through deceptive means, and civil penalties of $2,500 per violation under California law — with additional penalties for each violation committed against a senior citizen or disabled person. Given CRI received hundreds of complaints over four years and continued anyway, the per-violation count could be substantial.

If You Were a CRI Customer: Your Next Move

Step 1: Document everything. Find your original receipt, the emails CRI sent you, and any charges that appeared on your bank statement you did not recognize. Screenshot and save.

Step 2: File a complaint at FTC.gov/complaint and with your state attorney general. These complaints feed directly into enforcement actions like this one. The FTC’s own complaint references “hundreds of consumer complaints” — yours could matter.

Step 3: Dispute unauthorized charges through your bank or credit card company. If CRI charged you for items you did not knowingly confirm, that is a disputed transaction. Many banks will reverse it.

Consumer protection law is one of the few tools everyday people have against corporate fraud at scale. But those tools only work when people use them. Local consumer advocacy groups, mutual aid networks, and community legal clinics can help you navigate a dispute or a refund claim without paying a lawyer. Find them. Use them. Share this story so the people who got taken by CRI’s dark patterns know their options.