A former Loretto Hospital executive is accused of stealing $293 million, using fake COVID-19 tests of individuals who did not exist, federal prosecutors said in a blistering June 17 indictment.
Anosh Ahmed, who once served as west side Loretto Hospital’s chief operating officer and chief financial officer, has been charged with 14 counts of fraud and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government.
Ahmed also faces two counts of wrongful renumeration involving federal health care programs, wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health information and five counts of money laundering, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors say Ahmed, Mohamed “Siraj” Sirajudeen and Mahmood Sami Khan used O’Hare Clinical Lab and other facilities to submit false COVID-19 testing claims to the government, which paid them $300 million in reimbursements. They were seeking $900 million in reimbursements.
The alleged scheme was laid out in an indictment against Ahmed and Sirajudeen.
Ahmed resigned from Loretto Hospital in March 2021 after he was accused of allowing ineligible, affluent people to receive COVID-19 vaccinations designated for residents of the west side.
A month after Ahmed’s resignation, prosecutors said he received a spreadsheet of patients’ personal information from someone still working at Loretto Hospital. The leaked information included more than 150,000 Loretto patient visits from July 2014 to June 2020.
Prosecutors said Ahmed and individuals involved in the scheme also obtained people’s information from patients in exchange for a free COVID-19 antigen test. Prosecutors allege that patient information was also obtained from people who ordered at-home testing kits on a website run by the pair.
Prosecutors said Ahmed in June 2021, pretended he was collecting samples for COVID-19 tests at sites around the country to make it appear legitimate to O’Hare Clinical Lab.
According to the indictment, Ahmed and others would then provide “scrambled” information from fake patients to O’Hare Clinical Lab, which would purportedly process the tests and submit claims for them to the federal government. The lab would say the fake patients were uninsured, prosecutors said.
Ahmed also wanted to have the lab’s owner, Sirajudeen, pay a higher collection fee to Ahmed. Prosecutors said Sirajudeen believed Ahmed’s connection to Loretto would mean more business for O’Hare Clinical Lab.
Prosecutors said although O’Hare Clinical Lab agreed to pay Ahmed’s Westside Pharmacy business up to $49.50 per specimen that Ahmed’s business sent to the lab, the rate was increased but it was not updated in their written agreement to conceal this change.
According to the indictment, someone still working at Loretto helped in the plan by creating an email address through Loretto’s domain name. That allowed O’Hare Clinical Lab to send results for the fake tests collected through Ahmed. Prosecutors said the process made it appear that the results would be passed on to patients and that Ahmed was still connected to Loretto Hospital.
Prosecutors also alleged that Ahmed and Sirajudeen instructed workers to lie to government officials to help conceal the fraud.
According to the indictment, when the Illinois Department of Public Health “raised concerns” about the high volume of testing purportedly being done through Loretto Hospital, Ahmed and Sirajudeen instructed staff not to report test results to the agency. Prosecutors alleged they falsely informed the agency that Loretto Hospital would report the results in an attempt to conceal the scheme.
In July 2024, Ahmed and his business partner, Sameer Suhail in a separate case, were charged with wire fraud, embezzlement and money laundering. Prosecutors alleged they defrauded the hospital of $15 million.
Shortly after Ahmed resigned in March 2021, he admitted to arranging for vaccines for people who were not eligible to receive them, including workers at Trump Tower, and members of an Oak Forest church.
The Chicago Department of Public Health temporarily cut off Loretto Hospital’s supply of COVID-9 vaccines in March 2021, after learning of the scandal.