Nearly 3,000 ventilators costing taxpayers for $12 million were sold for only $24,600 on January 24th.
Posted on 02/27/2023 5:50:28 PM PST by SeekAndFind
City officials auctioned off nearly $225 million worth of surplus COVID-19 medical equipment and safety gear for just $500,000 — or a paltry 0.2 cents on the dollar, according to a stunning report Tuesday.
De Blasio’s administration also overpaid for items that included 50,000 face shields at $6.70 each, compared to an average price at the start of the pandemic of $3.67, The City said, citing information from city Comptroller Brad Lander.
They’re now part of a massive lot of 701,000 face shields that were reportedly put up for auction last week with an opening bid of just $1,000, or 0.14 cents each.
The City blamed the epic markdowns on de Blasio’s decision to waive any oversight of his panic purchases, preventing then-Comptroller Scott Stringer from scrutinizing the emergency contracts.
One contract, for $9.1 million, reportedly went to controversial, New Jersey-based Digital Gadgets for ventilators that the company failed to deliver, then provided the city with N95 masks instead.
The bargain-basement sales included nearly 3,000 mechanical ventilators that cost taxpayers $12 million but were unloaded as “non-functioning medical equipment for scrap metal” at a rock-bottom price of just $24,600 on Jan. 24, according to nonprofit news website The City.
It reportedly took 28 truckloads for a Long Island junk dealer to haul off the once-scarce devices, which former Mayor Bill de Blasio had predicted would help the Big Apple “beat this crisis and prepare for the next.”
“This is a story about doing the impossible,” de Blasio bragged on April 21, 2020. “We’d never made a ventilator before — and so we made thousands. We learned it would take a year — and so we did it in a month.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
That was what jumped out at me as well.
Good Gosh.
I am guessing that company making the ventilators were big Democrat donors. A big money-laundering scheme.
The medical-industrial criminal complex made a taxpayer-dollar killing.
That’s all that matters.
Man! If only I could’ve shorted that!
I’d be a billionaire!
Will anyone lose their job over this? I mean, its only a 99%+ loss on hundreds of $million$ in brand new equipment.
Before Covid, NYC hospitals quietly sold off, “lost”, and somehow rid themselves of equipment to the point of being critically (if not criminally)short of supply. Thus the scramble for ventilators and maks and gloves and such when the nation locked itself down over Covid19.
...And now they’re selling off their stocks of such things—again!—for barely two pennies on the dollar???
Still better than Biden is doing with the economy.
LOL!
How much for the hospital ship we sent there they refused to use?
So they paid about 4k each and sold them for $8 and change. Nice racket for some connected donor I bet.
Of course. Now many hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars was wasted by Democrat corruption around the US.
Once again because of scumbag grafters like deblowjob the tax payers pay the price, Its not their money! Meanwhile where is the 850 mill his wife stole for her mental health initiative that never was?
Sweet Jesus!
How many hospitals in poor countries would be thrilled to pay only $500 for a ventilator?
Heck, I wouldn’t mind some N95 masks for allergy season or working in my shop. Face shields too, for certain work!
Ain’t covid money wonderful? Nobody cares.
Correction: nobody in government or the media cares and taxpayers don’t count.
I heard they had Vinny selling them out of the back of his 1964 Pontiac Bonneville.
It had enough trunk room for all of the ventilators.
Color me so not surprised. The cronies of the politicos got well paid and the taxpayers got screwed and tattooed.
It is a racket, for sure, and not a new one. These will be warehoused, and when needed again sold back to the government at full list. When I was a contract administrator (private sector) I remember seeing a clause in the F.A.R. requiring a vendor to certify that goods offered had not previously been sold as surplus. That was over 40 years ago. The game was old even then.
For MONTHS after we got the ‘All Clear’ from our betters about CovidBS-19, there was a large bottle of hand sanitizer (for free!) in with my grocery order from Walmart each week.
A few weeks back, we took advantage of a program called ‘Ruby’s Pantry’ which gives you a good chunk of food for $25, though you have to wait in line and hear some ‘Come To Jesus’ sermons while waiting. (I’m already there, Jesus!)
In the last batch of goodies, there was a one gallon tub of sanitizing wipes left over from CovidBS-19, plus an additional plastic-wrapped refill for the bucket! Never in a million years could I go through THAT much sanitizing, so I donated it to my local Humane Society (no kill) shelter.
There’s so much graft and corruption surrounding CovidBS-19 I’m sure it’s not quantifiable by ANY measure!
What a racket Mother Government runs - at OUR expense!
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