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‘Not the Father’: Baltimore Man Says DNA Kit Got It Wrong

Filing suit against the same DNA company that talk-show hosts like Maury and Dr. Phil have used to settle paternity disputes, a Baltimore man claims that a spurious test wrongly identified him as the father of a 1-year-old girl.

BALTIMORE (CN) — Filing suit against the same DNA company that talk-show hosts like Maury and Dr. Phil have used to settle paternity disputes, a Baltimore man claims that a spurious test wrongly identified him as the father of a 1-year-old girl.

As first reported Friday by the Daily Record, Nnanaka Nwofor says he got the bogus results from a take-home test by the DNA Diagnostics Center in Baltimore.

Several months later, Nwofor allegedly took another DNA Diagnostics Center test, at the urging of an acquaintance.

This time it said he was not the father, so Nwofor and the child got tested at a local health care facility, which backed up the new results that they are not related.

Nwofor seeks $75,000 from DNA Diagnostics Center to cover his emotional distress and the cost of supporting the child and her mother. He says the paternity mix-up is a result of the company’s negligent handling of the genetic samples he submitted.

"He's filled with sorrow about it, and it took a long time to tell his family that he wasn't the father, because his family bonded with the child too," Nwofor's attorney Charles Edwards said, as quoted Monday by The Associated Press. "When a family goes all in and bonded to the child like he did and finds this out, it's devastating."

The website for the DNA Diagnostics Center says every sample from a home-test kit is tested twice to ensure accuracy.

“If you use an accredited lab like DDC, you can be confident your home paternity test results are 100% accurate for the samples provided to the laboratory,” the site promises. “For at-home testing, the lab relies on test participants to make sure samples being analyzed by the lab belong to the correct people.”

A spokesman for the DNA Diagnostics Center did not return a call requesting comment.

Nwofor's attorney Edwards did not immediately return a call requesting comment.

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