The former chief financial officer at Loretto Hospital who was at the center of a COVID vaccine scandal in the early days of the pandemic has been charged with defrauding the safety net hospital out of $15 million.
Anosh Ahmed, 40, was indicted by a federal grand jury on eight counts of wire fraud, four counts of embezzlement and three counts of money laundering, federal prosecutors announced Friday.
His friend, medical supply company owner Sameer Suhail, 47, was also charged in the same indictment. He’s facing six counts of wire fraud, six counts of aiding and abetting embezzlement and two counts of money laundering.
The federal charges came after a Block Club Chicago investigation that began with allegations that Ahmed funneled hard-to-get vaccines early in the pandemic to his neighbors at Trump Tower and to workers at high-end businesses he frequented. The vaccines were meant for the city’s poorest people but ended up in areas where Chicago’s wealthiest lived and played.
The indictment, handed up Thursday by a federal grand jury, superseded an earlier indictment that named only former Loretto Hospital Chief Transformation Officer Heather Bergdahl. But documents made clear that Ahmed was deeply embroiled in the investigation.
Bergdahl, 37, is now charged with 14 counts of wire fraud, 21 counts embezzlement and one count of money laundering, prosecutors said. She was first charged in May, and arrested when federal authorities learned she was sitting on a plane ready to take off for Dubai. Agents rushed to stop the flight and remove her, said a federal official who took part in the arrest.
Prosecutors allege Ahmed, who was in charge of managing Loretto’s finances, schemed with Bergdahl and Suhail to send vendor payments for goods and services not provided to the hospital. Many of the companies were created by Suhail and Ahmed “under various names to conceal their association with fraudulent payment,” according to the indictment.
Ahmed hired Bergdahl, and it appeared they knew each other before that from living in Houston, according to the earlier criminal complaint.
After Ahmed resigned in March 2021, Bergdahl continued at the hospital — and issued $486,540 in checks from the hospital to companies where Ahmed was the CEO, according to the complaint.
Ahmed would deposit the money into the bank accounts for those companies, then move them to other accounts he controlled, according to the complaint. None of the companies provides services or goods to Loretto Hospital, according to the criminal complaint.
The accounts listed an address in the 400 block of North Wabash Avenue, according to the complaint. Ahmed had a home at Trump Tower on the block. Around November 2021, the accounts’ addresses were changed to an address in Houston — where Ahmed had a condo.
Four of the checks — which totaled $314,888.96 — were issued just in the four days after Ahmed opened the bank accounts, according to the complaint.
Bergdahl didn’t submit bills, invoices or other proof of a transaction for the checks, going against Loretto’s usual practices, according to the complaint.
And while Bergdahl was employed at Loretto Hospital, she received more than $419,000 from two of Ahmed’s accounts, according to the complaint.
Records also showed phones connected to Bergdahl and Ahmed making frequent contact, including during the times when the checks were issued from the hospital to the entities controlled by Ahmed, according to the complaint.
“I believe that, during those calls, Bergdahl and [Ahmed] planned and coordinated Bergdahl’s embezzlement of [Loretto’s] funds by way of checks made payable to the Individual A Entities, and [Ahmed’s] opening of bank accounts in the names of those entities to receive those funds,” an FBI agent notes in the complaint.
Some of the checks also included a signature from Ahmed on the payor line, even though he was no longer working at Loretto Hospital, according to the complaint.
There are other indications the businesses that received funds were not legitimate, such as them lacking websites, not having business registrations and not having regular banking transactions, according to the complaint.
Bergdahl left Loretto Hospital in March 2022 but continued as a contractor until that April, when the hospital “terminated its relationship” with her, according to the complaint.
Bergdahl currently works as the CFO at Anosh Inc. in Houston, Texas, according to her LinkedIn profile. She lives in Houston, where Ahmed also has a residence.
Berhdahl was released on a $486,000 bond secured by her parent’s home, court records show. As a condition of her release, Bergdahl was ordered to have no contact with Ahmed, according to federal court papers filed in Texas. Bergdahl’s attorney, Jordan Melissa Matthews, did not immediately return a call for comment Monday afternoon.
Loretto Hospital has seen several shakeups and FBI investigations since Block Club’s reporting.
Starting in March 2021, Block Club revealed the hospital was funneling vaccines meant for underserved areas of the West Side to ineligible people at Chicago’s Trump Tower, where Loretto’s then-chief financial officer, Ahmed, lived, and at a luxury jewelry store and high-end Gold Coast steakhouse where Ahmed hung out. Then-CEO George Miller’s suburban church also received vaccines.
Block Club then partnered with the Better Government Association to show Ahmed’s friends won contracts worth $4 million from the nonprofit hospital while Loretto board members took hospital-funded Caribbean trips, among other benefits.
The Loretto Hospital investigations led to FBI and state probes, the resignation of Ahmed, the end of Miller’s leadership at the hospital and prompted the city to take over vaccine distribution to ensure doses went to West Siders who were struggling to get shots instead of the rich and powerful.