Dr. Amos Buchnik and Arik Klein were arrested at 8:30 am today by the Tel Aviv District Police fraud squad over the 2009 fraud of their fictitious medical patch, which was exposed by "Globes". They will be brought before the Tel Aviv Magistrates Court for remand this afternoon.
Buchnik and Klein are suspected for fraud and forgery, based on an investigation of several months, during which the police gathered evidence and documents.
Buchnik owns SafeSky Software Ltd., which owns the rights to the Life Keeper "miracle patch", a device that allegedly prevents heart attacks. Last month, he testified in court that he did not believe that Klein, who invented the patch, had carried out a sting on him, despite reports about Klein's dubious conduct.
"There was no sting. There is a patch, and there is a deal," he said in the libel suit he and Klein filed against "Globes" with the Petah Tikva Magistrates Court.
In July 2009, Buchnik and Klein claimed to have sold a 37% stake in the Life Keeper device to Taiwan computer hardware manufacturer Micro-Star International Co. Ltd.(TSE: 2377) (MSI) for $370 million. The deal sounded incredible, both because of the amount of money involved and the product's scientific breakthrough. Moreover, the Israeli medical and life science industry had never heard of the product or the company.
It quickly emerged that the alleged product had no patents or certification from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). MSI denied that there was a deal and said that it had never heard of the entrepreneurs.
Besides Buchnik and Klein, no employees could be found for the company, no doctors existed who had tested the device at any medical center. A computer store in Petah Tikva claimed that Klein had bought an RFID chip that closely resembled the patch that he and Buchnik had presented. Moreover, Klein had been jailed for six years for fraud when he allegedly developed the device alone.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 3, 2011
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2011