Philly Fighting COVID CEO Doroshin banned from working in Pa.

Philly Fighting COVID CEO Andrei Doroshin also owes $30,000 to the Attorney General's office.

• Nina Feldman/WHYY
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  Nina Feldman covers behavioral health for WHYY. She grew up in Ann Arbor Michigan, but before coming to Philadelphia she lived in New Orleans, where she worked at American Routes and contributed to the NPR affiliate WWNO. She likes to understand neighborhoods, watch friends do what they’re good at, and be underwater. She also started the New Orleans Ladies Arm Wrestling league, or NO LAW.

Philly Fighting COVID CEO Andrei Doroshin has been banned from doing government or health work in the state of Pennsylvania for a decade. He’s also on the hook for $30,000, after Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro filed a civil complaint against him on Friday. The complaint asserts that Doroshin violated Pennsylvania consumer protection, charitable solicitation, and nonprofit corporation laws

“Mr. Doroshin put people’s privacy at risk under the guise of serving as a nonprofit, and he is now being held accountable for those actions,” Shapiro said in a statement.

A consent decree has been sent to Commonwealth Court for approval.

The terms require Doroshin to destroy any data collected through Philly Fighting COVID’s vaccination pre-registration site. They also ban Doroshin from doing any sort of charity work or government contracting as it relates to consumer health services in the state of Pennsylvania for 10 years.

“If Doroshin or any of his associates from Philly Fighting COVID violate this order, my office will not hesitate to act,” said AG Shapiro.

Doroshin was the head of the startup, selected by the city of Philadelphia to run its first mass vaccination clinics in January 2021. The city cut ties with the group after WHYY News/Billy Penn reported that Philly Fighting COVID had abandoned its testing operations in Black and Latino neighborhoods and had hastily switched to a for-profit company. Doroshin himself admitted taking several doses of vaccine off site from the Pennsylvania Convention Center to administer personally to friends.

Doroshin was more recently reportedly involved in another vaccination operation with his father in Georgia and New York.

“I want to thank Attorney General Josh Shapiro and his staff for their investigation and work to hold Mr. Doroshin accountable,” Mayor Jim Kenney said in the joint statement issued Friday by the Office of the Attorney General. “As we’ve said previously, working with Mr. Doroshin and Philly Fighting COVID was a mistake.”

According to Shapiro’s office, the terms of the consent decree also require Doroshin to pay $30,000 to the Office of the Attorney General by September in order to avoid a fee twice that amount. If Doroshin fails to meet the terms of the settlement, he could be on the hook for $700,000 in penalties.

The money paid in restitution will be distributed to one or more charitable organizations providing COVID-19 testing and vaccination services for disadvantaged communities in Philadelphia.