How a COVID vaccine startup with no track record landed $36.5 million from Jersey City

Public records reveal eye-popping vaccine costs

Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop is running for governor as a reformer, vowing to break the power of New Jersey’s notorious political bosses.

But amid the global COVID-19 crisis and a glut of federal money, the Democrat’s administration pulled a classic backroom move — steering tens of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts for its vaccination program to a then-unknown company, Bespoke Health, whose owners later underwrote a portion of the mayor’s travel to France and boosted his political allies. What’s more, insiders told The Jersey Vindicator that Fulop’s appointees urged officials in neighboring Bayonne to assign even more D.C.-subsidized work to the firm, enriching its founders, who proceeded to acquire millions of dollars in property and launch additional business ventures, including a Jersey City-approved cannabis firm.

Meanwhile, numbers The Jersey Vindicator obtained via Open Public Records Act requests show that Fulop’s $36.5 million Bespoke-run program spent more than 11 times the amount per shot that Hudson County’s Regional Health Commission paid through its $2.2 million in-house initiative. Jersey City paid more than $339 for each of the 107,760 Bespoke-administered inoculations, compared to the $29.19 per dose for 75,356 doses the county injected. Sources noted that the federal government supplied the vaccines themselves for free, meaning the municipalities needed to pay for little more than staff, advertising, and iPads for administration and tracking.

Further, materials filed in a New York court reveal the role of Fulop’s Health and Human Services Director Stacey Flanagan — also a Jersey City Democratic Party ward leader — in helping Bespoke secure the vaccination contracts. The court records show Flanagan forwarded communications she had with other public health officials to one of Bespoke’s founders while the company was still in its formative period and before Jersey City awarded the vaccine contract.

Fulop’s office defended Flanagan and the city’s business dealings with Bespoke, asserting that they received approval from relevant New Jersey authorities and from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and that the city sent and tracked all payments through a third-party grant manager.

“At a time when lives were being lost at an unprecedented rate and guidance was minimal, the city’s priority was to act swiftly and decisively to save lives and curb the spread of the virus,” said Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione, a spokeswoman for Fulop. “To be clear, every aspect of the city’s testing and vaccine programs was done lawfully with full approval from FEMA, the county, and the state, as required.”

The spokeswoman called the comparison between Jersey City’s and Hudson County’s vaccination programs “apples and oranges” — and also “immoral and fraudulent” — highlighting that the city had more vaccination sites open on more days and for longer hours. However, she did not dispute The Jersey Vindicator’s finding that the mayor’s contracted program administered only 43% more vaccines for 1,660% of the cost. She did, however, claim that the county had access to state and volunteer personnel unavailable to the Fulop-Bespoke initiative. The Hudson Regional Health Commission disputed this, saying that the state provided no staffing assistance and noting that volunteers only logged 1,874 hours during the first months of vaccinations.

Hudson Regional Health Commission Executive Director Carrie Nawrocki added that the commission eventually hired most of these volunteers at rates of $25 to $50 an hour.

“We were very grateful for the volunteers and after a few months offered them paid positions to stay on and help us with our program,” Nawrocki wrote in an email to The Jersey Vindicator. “That cost would have then been captured in the overall vaccination costs.”

Even at the highest pay point, then, volunteer staff hours could account for no more than $93,700 of the cost discrepancy between the county and the city.

Wallace-Scalcione further asserted that Bespoke is “a reputable company” that had already performed COVID-related services for New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority at the time Jersey City hired them.

The MTA told The Jersey Vindicator they had no record of Bespoke serving as one of its vendors, and a search of the New York state comptroller’s procurement database shows no contracts with the firm. shows no contracts with the firm.

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From Ambulanz to Bespoke Health

Bespoke Health was the creation of two men: Derek Rapisarda, an attorney, and Ari Matityahu, who describes himself on LinkedIn as an entrepreneur and “advocate for impactful global investment & philanthropy.” Matityahu had previously gained mild notoriety for clumsy efforts at corporate espionage on behalf of his former employer, WeWork, and has since presented himself as an expert on business opportunities in the Middle East and North Africa. He has left his role as a partner at Bespoke off of his LinkedIn résumé.

Rapisarda’s wife, Marisa Zafran, a self-styled “marketing, communications & brand exec,” served as the firm’s head of marketing and communications, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Matityahu did not respond to questions sent by email, text, or WhatsApp, and a man who answered the phone at a number listed for him in court records hung up almost immediately after a reporter from The Jersey Vindicator identified himself.

“I can’t help you, sorry,” he said before severing the call.

Rapisarda similarly did not answer questions but provided a statement on behalf of Bespoke via email, cc’ing Matityahu and his wife.

“We are incredibly proud of the large vaccine numbers you mentioned and what we were able to accomplish for the city of Jersey City,” the statement reads. “We could not have achieved nearly the result that we did without the valuable support we received from Mayor Fulop, Director Flanagan and the countless other officials and community members that assisted us along the way.”

New York state corporation records show Rapisarda formed Bespoke Health LLC on Oct. 29, 2020, out of the apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan that he and Zafran then shared. Only days before, he had accepted a severance deal to exit his role as vice president of compliance and privacy counsel at Ambulanz, which at the time held contracts with Jersey City to operate COVID-19 testing sites via its subsidiary, Rapid Reliable Testing.

At the time, Matityahu remained employed at Ambulanz as its vice president of strategy and special projects. In a civil suit brought against the pair, Ambulanz alleged that — despite both men having noncompete agreements — Rapisarda “actively recruited Ari to leave his employment with Ambulanz and solicited him to join Bespoke Health,” while Ari “solicited million-dollar vaccination projects on behalf of Bespoke Health” even though he was still working for Ambulanz.

As exhibits, Ambulanz submitted emails Flanagan, the Fulop health department appointee and ward leader, sent to Matityahu in the days immediately following Bespoke’s creation. These filings show Flanagan repeatedly forwarded Matityahu messages among Jersey City and Hudson County health officials outlining ideas for a then-impending COVID-19 public vaccination program.

“Understood. Lets begin :)” Matityahu wrote back to Flanagan, still using his Rapid Reliable Testing address for the correspondence.

“Do you have an alternative email?” Flanagan asked in response.

As further evidence, the company filed a message Matityahu received in December 2020 at a different Ambulanz email from another Jersey City Health and Human Services Department employee, on which Rapisarda and Flanagan were both cc’ed: an invitation to a Microsoft Teams meeting.

“This will be a meeting to discuss next steps with the COVID vaccination plan for Jersey City with representatives from Bespoke Health,” the email reads.

From the start, Bespoke displayed political savvy, pledging to collaborate closely with the nonprofit ANGELACares, founded by state Sen. Angela McKnight, a Fulop ally.

Around the same time, leaders in neighboring Bayonne, where at the time Mayor Jimmy Davis was a close political ally of Fulop’s, were attempting to set up a local COVID testing program. One local official, who requested anonymity to avoid jeopardizing their job, recalled getting an unsolicited phone call from Flanagan in which she gave a “hard sell” on behalf of Bespoke.

“‘These guys are great, they’re the best thing since sliced bread, you’ve gotta hire them,’” the source said, describing the tone and substance of the conversation.

Flanagan did not respond to questions The Jersey Vindicator sent via email, phone, and text message. Wallace-Scalcione, the Fulop spokeswoman, called any suggestion that these communications reflected a relationship between the health department director and the Bespoke team a “conspiracy theory.”

Rather, she asserted that Bayonne had sought out Flanagan’s counsel first, and that at no time did the Jersey City official encourage Davis to contract with Bespoke or any other particular entity.

“The mayor of Bayonne sought assistance from our HHS director at a time when Jersey City was well ahead of most municipalities in providing much-needed testing at the height of the pandemic,” she said. “It is not uncommon for other local municipalities to ask for references when they are in need, especially during a global health crisis. No one was urged to use any specific company.”

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“The facts speak for themselves”

In the lawsuit, Ambulanz officials say the company terminated Matityahu’s employment on Jan. 8. Five days later, at Fulop’s request, the Jersey City Council signed off on the first $1 million no-bid vaccination contract with Bespoke.

Coming amid the pandemic perma-panic, with the vote taking place over Zoom, council insiders told The Jersey Vindicator that few cared to oppose the contract — especially since the federal government would reimburse the cost. For the sake of speed, the state of emergency allowed municipalities to bypass usual procurement protocol and give contracts to firms without a normal competitive process.

“Things were moving very quickly, and there was a lot of ‘this is an emergency situation and we need to act very quickly,’” said Councilman James Solomon, who voted in favor of the original outlay. “We were always kind of told ‘hey, FEMA is going to pay for this at the end of the day.’”

The lone “no” vote came from then-Councilman Rolando Lavarro, who noted Bespoke’s recent creation and its founders’ prior relationship with Ambulanz and Rapid Reliable Testing.

“It calls into question what the heck is going on here and what are we putting our money into,” Lavarro said at the time, even as he acknowledged the “dire” need for a comprehensive vaccine program. “I can’t vote to approve this contract under these circumstances.”

Flanagan spoke out at the meeting in Matityahu and Rapisarda’s defense.

“I don’t think it’s a crime to be an entrepreneur,” Flanagan told the council, noting that the city had already launched the vaccination endeavor and many first responders had gotten their shots. “I don’t think it’s a crime to live on the Upper West Side.”

Looking back — and looking at The Jersey Vindicator’s findings — Lavarro expressed pride in his solitary “nay” at the council hearing.

“I voted ‘no’ because Bespoke was a brand-new company with no track record in vaccine administration during our greatest public health crisis,” Lavarro said. “In retrospect, the facts speak for themselves.”

Although the contract the council approved was originally for only $1 million, the city would ultimately pay the company more than $21.5 million in 2021, according to documents subsequently shared with the council that The Jersey Vindicator reviewed. What’s more, in April, Bayonne inked its own $900,000 no-bid deal with Bespoke to run testing programs for the city. Two sources, who requested anonymity to avoid compromising their personal situations, told The Jersey Vindicator that in an internal meeting in early 2021, Mayor Davis verbally identified Fulop’s chief of staff, John Minella — a Bayonne resident and Davis’s future campaign manager — as instrumental in bringing Bespoke into the town.

Minella did not answer calls or texts, and Fulop’s team denied his involvement in the Bayonne deal. Davis’s office also disputed this, but provided a different version from Jersey City of how Bayonne reached out to the Fulop administration.

“After a failed attempt at enlisting the services of another provider to administer a testing and vaccine program in the city of Bayonne, the city of Bayonne’s OEM coordinator, Edoardo Ferrante, contacted Jersey City’s OEM coordinator, W. Greg Kierce, to inquire as to who the city of Jersey City was using to administer its program and whether or not Jersey City was happy with the services being provided,” Bayonne Law Director Jay Coffey wrote in an email to The Jersey Vindicator. “All arrangements between the city of Bayonne and Bespoke Health were done so independent of Stacey Flanagan and John Manilla [sic].”

At least one Bespoke-run testing site in Bayonne experienced severe delays in delivering results. An official who had a close-up view of its operations, and requested anonymity to avoid political reprisals, described the company as little more than a “temp agency” hiring short-term workers and described Rapisarda and Matityahu as “schmoes.” Nonetheless, after two months, Bayonne enlarged its outlay to the firm by an additional $1 million, and by another $3.5 million at the end of the year.

Also in April, Ambulanz brought its lawsuit against Rapisarda, Matityahu and Bespoke in New York state court. In their defense, Rapisarda argued that he and Bespoke had not pursued the opportunity with Jersey City, but rather Jersey City had pursued them.

“In late 2020, I was contacted by Stacey Flanagan, the director of health & human services for the city of Jersey City, New Jersey. Ms. Flanagan stated that Jersey City was looking for a healthcare provider to administer Jersey City’s COVID-19 vaccination program,” Rapisarda recounted in one court document. “Bespoke Health did not solicit this opportunity. Rather, it was presented to Bespoke Health by Ms. Flanagan.”

To buttress these claims, Bespoke’s legal team submitted an affidavit from Flanagan herself.

The health official and Democratic operative asserted that the two men had not violated their non-compete agreements with Ambulanz/Rapid Reliable Testing, as there simply had been no competition. Her department, she attested, had decided that none of the vendors involved in the city’s COVID testing program would be eligible to run its inoculation initiative.

“None of the providers who have provided COVID-19 testing were considered for Jersey City’s vaccination program, including Rapid Reliable Testing,” Flanagan stated in the filing, beseeching the judge not to issue an injunction against Bespoke. “If Bespoke Health LLC is enjoined from continuing to provide vaccination services for Jersey City, vaccinations will be halted and disrupted, which will significantly harm Jersey City and the general public, as we work to get the pandemic under control.”

However, as the plaintiff noted in subsequent filings, this account did not explain why Flanagan repeatedly sent Matityahu materials related to the forthcoming vaccine program while he still worked at Ambulanz. 

By late 2021, Bespoke would sign another testing deal with Hoboken, led by another Fulop ally, Mayor Ravi Bhalla. However, the company’s testing site was so beset with delays that the city quickly cancelled the contract, a Bhalla spokesperson said.

From COVID vaccines to cannabis

Matityahu and Zafran were soon looking for new investment opportunities. The two formed Garden State Green, a cannabis dispensary entity, and applied for a license the subsequent spring.

Meanwhile, in January 2022, Matityahu made arrangements to acquire a vineyard in upstate New York for the purposes of converting it to a wedding venue and corporate retreat. His business partner in the deal would subsequently sue Matityahu, alleging he had submitted fraudulent documents to state and local officials, though not before a DJ friend of Flanagan’s could solicit an opportunity to perform at the location.

Also in January 2022, the Jersey City Council approved a $15 million new vaccination contract with Bespoke. Councilman Lavarro was no longer in office, but multiple council members now questioned the price tag and asked for breakdowns of Bespoke’s expenses. A council source noted that Jersey City provided vaccination sites free of cost, while the federal government supplied the shots.

That same month, Bespoke billed the city $1,097,287.50 for 15,500 COVID tests it had distributed or administered over the course of 24 days. This, along with disclosures about Bespoke’s prior payments, appears to have soured the Council on dealings with the company, and it rejected the Fulop administration’s proposal for a $2.5 million additional deal with the firm. Meanwhile, in March, Bespoke clashed with Hudson County over the only competitively bid contract it ever won: to provide personal protective equipment for Meadowview Psychiatric Center. Hudson County Commissioner Bill O’Dea expressed incredulity when recalling how Bespoke demanded more money than it had bid before it would provide the supplies.

“In all the years I’ve been an elected official, probably 35 years, it was the first time somebody bid on a project and then on every item wanted significantly more money,” O’Dea told The Jersey Vindicator. “It was almost like holding us hostage. During COVID there was such a demand, and then weeks later they were trying to get more money.”

The county ultimately declared Bespoke in default on the contract, and barred the company from bidding on new opportunities through December 2024.

Fulop, however, defended the firm, even as he confessed its financials weren’t “perfect.”

“They did a good job for us setting up a vaccine program quickly and efficiently,” he told the Jersey Journal at the end of March. “Do I think that from a high level that Bespoke did a good job at getting people vaccinated and tested? The answer is also ‘yes.’”

In April, Matityahu established Danforth Investors, a boutique investment firm, in Delaware. Two months later, he signed multiple memoranda of understanding with Moroccan authorities and pledged to sink funds into the Western Sahara region, control of which is disputed under international law. The venture marked the start of Matityahu’s new career representing himself as an expert on business opportunities in the Arab world.

According to Hudson County health officials, Bespoke wrapped vaccinations in Jersey City on May 20, 2022. But even if Jersey City was done with Bespoke, they were not done with Jersey City.

In August 2022, another company formed in Rapisarda and Zafran’s Upper West Side home acquired a building in Jersey City’s McGinley Square neighborhood for $850,000. Rapisarda signed the paperwork. The site is eligible to operate as a cannabis retailer — a fact advertised in real estate listings — and an original letter of intent for the purchase The Jersey Vindicator reviewed shows the original purchasing entity was to have been Garden State Green.

Yet Garden State Green appears to have never sought to operate at this location. Rather, it sought to open its dispensary at 120 Tidewater St., a property belonging to developer Peter Mocco, a major Fulop donor and ally.

Communications The Jersey Vindicator reviewed show Matityahu remained involved in Garden State Green until at least November 2022. But when the application came before the Fulop-appointed Cannabis Control Board, he had disappeared from the forms, and Zafran was the only original officer of the company present at the hearing.

Zafran boasted of being a “Jersey girl, born and bred” and talked about her “two sets of cousins who have lived here in downtown Jersey City for many years.” But she never mentioned she had served as head of marketing and communications for the city’s COVID-19 vaccine provider for more than a year.

Flanagan, then a member of the Cannabis Control Board, recused herself before Zafran could testify. Fulop’s office said she could not recall why she had done this.

Four days before the hearing, Fulop revealed that Bespoke had been among a number of companies that helped subsidize a controversial trip he and other officials took to Paris in pursuit of a plan to bring a Pompidou museum to Jersey City. The disclosure did not indicate exact amount Bespoke or any of the other firms had put up. 

Eight days after the board’s hearing, Rapisarda donated $7,800 to a Fulop-backed slate of state legislative candidates.

Still, the 120 Tidewater St. dispensary has never opened, and Garden State Green’s license has now expired. The McGinley Square building sold in late 2024 for $720,000.

Also in 2024, Rapisarda and Zafran purchased a $4.15 million mansion in Westport, Connecticut, which a local news article noted boasts “six bedrooms, six bathrooms, three half bathrooms, a basement, a stone patio, a garage, an open porch, a finished upper story, a finished attic and an inground pool.”

Ambulanz and Bespoke agreed to discontinue their legal fight in April of this year, shortly after notifying the court of settlement negotiations. Bespoke Health LLC has a $21,000 Workers’ Compensation Board judgment against it in New York.

In his statement on behalf of Bespoke, Rapisarda referred to these additional dealings as “separate matters that are not meaningfully connected.”

“We want to be clear,” he wrote. “Any implication of a relationship between them would be inaccurate and intentional.”