INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill filed a civil lawsuit against a man and a corporation that allegedly conspired to defraud the state out of hundreds of millions of dollars during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to a statement from Hill's office, Zachary Puznak and Zenger LLC of Reno, Nevada, offered to sell the state government millions of in-demand N95 respirator masks on behalf of the manufacturer, 3M. Indiana’s complaint alleges they had no actual connection to 3M, nor did they have the ability to obtain N95 masks in large quantities.
The complaint says the offer appears to have been nothing more than an attempt to quickly obtain a large monetary payment from the State of Indiana without delivering any product.
Under the terms of Puznak’s offer, the State of Indiana would have paid Puznak $285 million to $14.25 billion dollars, depending on the amount of N95 masks it purchased. At the time of Puznak’s email to Indiana officials, 3M’s annual global production of all N95 masks was 1.1 billion, or 3.9 billion fewer than Puznak represented he could sell to the State of Indiana.
“These fraudsters tried to pull off their scheme in April of 2020,” Hill said in the statement. “That’s when states across the nation were scrambling to obtain sufficient supplies of personal protective equipment to outfit first responders, health-care workers and essential businesses. Anyone attempting to use such times of crisis for unethical personal gain must be held accountable for their actions.”
Indiana’s complaint alleges that Puznak and Zenger violated Indiana’s Deceptive Consumer Sales Act and False Claims Act.
It also seeks to prohibit Puznak and Zenger from selling PPE in Indiana without first reporting specific details of the sale to the attorney general, and asks for civil penalties to be determined at a trial as well as reimbursement of legal costs.