Veritas video: NYC funeral directors doubt accuracy of coronavirus fatality count

James O'Keefe

A number of New York City doctors interviewed by James O'Keefe's Project Veritas are casting doubt on the number of deaths determined to have been caused by COVID-19.

"To be honest with you, all of the death certificates are writing COVID on it, they're writing COVID on all the death certificates," said Michael Lanza of the Staten Island Colonial Funeral Home.

The video:

BREAKING: Funeral Directors in COVID-19 Epicenter Doubt Legitimacy of Deaths Attributed to Pandemic; Fear Numbers are "Padded"

FULL STORY: https://t.co/aAC7cGd38A

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"Whether they had a positive test or didn't, so I think again this is my personal opinion, I think like the mayor and our city – they're looking for federal funding and the more they put COVID on the death certificate, the more money they can ask from the federal funds," Lanza charged.

The numbers just doesn't add up, he said.

"I think it’s political, so, I’m going to turn around and say: 'You know, like, not everybody that we have here that has COVID on the death certificate died of COVID.' Can I prove that? No, but that is my suspicion," he said.

According to O'Keefe, Josephine DiMiceli, president of the DiMiceli and Sons, a Queens-based funeral service, said the sister of a deceased woman "refused to believe that her sister had COVID-19."

An autopsy later proved the woman's suspicions correct, he said.

And Joseph Antioco, the director of Brooklyn’s Schaeffer Funeral Home, told another undercover journalist that if the deceased was not under the care of a private physician, the chances were very good their cause of death was going down as COVID-19.

"Two weeks ago, I had a 40-year-old man that died in his house, okay? They didn’t even go to the house, the guy had no underlying causes, no medical conditions, they released him from the house without even going saying he had COVID-19 because he had a fever," he said.

"How do you know that’s what he had? You don’t. But, now the death certificate showed shows that he had COVID-19," he said.

Antioco said COVID-19 has become the go-to cause of death.

"How many of them are actually COVID-19? Or is the M.E.(Medical Examiner) just putting that because they don’t want to go to the scene?"