The former Loretto Hospital executive charged with stealing millions from Austin’s safety-net hospital also used fake COVID-19 testing companies to steal about $300 million from the government, prosecutors alleged in a newly unsealed indictment.
Former Loretto COO and CFO Anosh Ahmed is among a group of four who now face charges related to the scheme, prosecutors said.
Block Club has reported extensively on Ahmed’s troubling conduct at Loretto Hospital, from letting well-connected people access COVID-19 vaccines early — and even bragging he vaccinated Eric Trump — to contracting with companies owned by his business partner, best friend and neighbor, Sameer Suhail.
Ahmed and Suhail were previously charged with wire fraud, embezzlement and money laundering, with prosecutors alleging they defrauded the hospital out of $15 million. They fled to Dubai.
Separately, Block Club also revealed in 2021 and 2022 that various COVID-19 testing companies were providing questionable and sometimes fake results while appearing to wrongfully seek federal reimbursements worth hundreds of millions of dollars. One of the labs highlighted by Block Club Chicago for problematic work was O’Hare Clinical Lab.
Now, those stories have converged, as prosecutors say Ahmed, Mohamed “Siraj” Sirajudeen and Mahmood Sami Khan used O’Hare Clinical Lab, among others, to submit false COVID-19 testing claims to the government. They sought about $900 million in reimbursements, of which they received about $300 million.
The scheme was laid out in an indictment that was unsealed June 17.
Ahmed has been charged with 14 counts of fraud, as well as conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, 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.
Sirajudeen, Khan and Suhaib Ahmad Chaudhry also face various charges in the case.
O’Hare Clinical Lab got $202 Million from feds
The indictment alleges Ahmed and others used O’Hare Clinical Lab and other labs to defraud hundreds of millions from the government via fake COVID-19 testing.
Ahmed and others connected to his plan submitted about 1.36 million false claims via O’Hare Clinical Lab for more than 1 million fake patients in just three months in 2021, prosecutors said.
Ahmed worked with Sirajudeen — who operated the lab and owned its management company, Chicago Polyclinic — for the scheme, which took place in 2021, prosecutors said.
Ahmed resigned from Loretto Hospital in March 2021 after Block Club’s reports about him letting people cut lines to get COVID-19 vaccines.
A month later, when Ahmed was no longer working at Loretto Hospital, he received a spreadsheet of patients’ personal information from someone who was still working there, prosecutors said. The leaked information covered more than 150,000 Loretto patient visits from July 2014 to June 2020.
Ahmed and the others involved in the scheme also obtained people’s information through other means, such as by collecting information from people in exchange for a free COVID-19 antigen test or taking it from people who ordered at-home testing kits on a site they ran, prosecutors said.
This information was eventually used when submitting false COVID-19 testing claims to the government for reimbursement, prosecutors said.
Beginning around June 2021, Ahmed pretended he was collecting samples for COVID-19 tests at sites around the country and performing tests on behalf of Loretto Hospital — even though he was no longer working there — to make the testing 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, saying the fake patients were uninsured, according to the indictment.
Ahmed also sought to get the lab’s owner, Sirajudeen, to pay a higher collection fee to Ahmed, since Sirajudeen thought Ahmed’s connection to Loretto would mean more business for O’Hare Clinical Lab, prosecutors said.
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, prosecutors said. But the two soon changed the terms of their agreement so that Ahmed would get more money in exchange for each of the specimens his company sent in, though they did not update their written agreement and concealed this change, prosecutors said.
Someone who was still working at Loretto helped in the plan by creating an email address through Loretto’s domain name where O’Hare Clinical Lab could send results for the fake tests collected through Ahmed, making it appear the results would be passed on to patients and that Ahmed was still connected to Loretto, prosecutors said.
Ahmed and Sirajudeen also instructed workers to lie to government officials to help conceal the fraud, prosecutors said.
Just between June 4, 2021, and Sept. 10, 2021, the federal government reimbursed O’Hare Clinical Lab for about $202 million for tests related to Ahmed’s collection sites — and the lab and its management company then paid Ahmed’s companies about $147 million, prosecutors said.
When the federal government disqualified O’Hare Clinical Lab in September 2021 from submitting claims due to a worker’s felony conviction, Sirajudeen and Ahmed tried to “continue the scheme” by appearing to change the lab’s ownership, but they were unsuccessful, prosecutors said.
And when the Illinois Department of Public Health “raised concerns” about the amount of testing purportedly being done through Loretto Hospital, Ahmed and Sirajudeen instructed staff not to report test results to the agency and falsely informed the agency that Loretto would report the results, hoping to conceal the scheme, prosecutors said.
Later in 2021, Ahmed — with Khan and Chaudhry — took control of a number of non-operational laboratories in Texas, prosecutors said. Ahmed, Khan and others then worked to submit via those labs about 466,000 false claims to the government for COVID-19 testing, billing the feds about $227.4 million and obtaining $83.36 million, prosecutors said.
Separately, in December 2021, Ahmed and Sirajudeen said Ahmed was going to buy a working lab in Texas — but that they’d conceal the ownership, having the documentation show the lab was owned by Khan and another person, prosecutors said.
That lab, too, then submitted fake claims for COVID-19 test results to the government, seeking about $25 million and getting about $8 million, prosecutors said.
Ahmed, Sirajudeen and Khan tried to conceal the false claims made on behalf of the Texas labs, opening bank accounts with misleading names, creating false and backdated invoices and contracts and moving money between various bank accounts, prosecutors said.
Ahmed also ordered his co-schemers to only use encrypted messaging apps, replace their phones and destroy their communications and documents related to the scheme, prosecutors said.
Years in the making
Ahmed could not immediately be reached for comment. He fled to Dubai in 2024 as he faced charges in the Loretto case.
Attorneys were not listed for Sirajudeen, Khan and Chaudhry.
If convicted, the defendants will have to forfeit a number of properties, cash and assets allegedly related to the crimes, including up to $50.5 million in an account Ahmed had; interests and securities worth tens of millions; luxury cars, including two Rolls Royce, a Mercedes-Benz and a Lamborghini Huaracan; and multiple properties in Houston.
The cases were years in the making.
In March 2021, when vaccines were still rare and highly sought-after, Block Club reported that Trump Tower had vaccinated its staff, claiming it was part of a program meant to help residents of the West and South side, which had been gravely impacted by COVID-19.
In a series of stories, Block Club then revealed the vaccinations had been set up by Ahmed, who’d also bragged that he’d vaccinated Eric Trump, son of President Donald Trump. Further stories showed Loretto had also vaccinated people at a luxury Gold Coast jewelry shop that Ahmed frequented and people at a steakhouse he ate at.
The hospital also vaccinated people at CEO George Miller’s suburban church, and a doctor with ties to Loretto vaccinated his suburban-based family with doses from the hospital.
Ahmed resigned within days, and the city took control of the hospital’s doses in an attempt to ensure they would go to the people who needed them most.
Block Club, with the Better Government Association, then raised questions about the Suhail companies that were awarded millions of dollars in contracts under Ahmed’s leadership, but Loretto repeatedly declined to say whether Ahmed had disclosed the potential conflict of interest. It also declined to answer questions about whether Loretto was working with any other Suhail companies.
One of the hospital’s most prominent supporters during the scandal was state Sen. Kimberly Lightford, the Illinois Senate majority leader and vice chair of Loretto’s board. She repeatedly criticized Block Club’s reporting and defended then-CEO Miller.
Block Club and the Better Government Association showed the hospital and its leaders were facing several investigations, including FBI probes.
Miller left Loretto in April 2022 amid the investigations.
Then, in May 2024, former hospital executive Heather Bergdahl was charged with embezzling $500,000 from the hospital during the COVID-19 crisis. Ahmed and Suhail were charged with defrauding the hospital of $15 million that July, and, in October, prosecutors said Miller had accepted $770,000 in bribes to funnel hospital contracts to companies run by Suhail.
Separately, in late 2021 and early 2022, when the United States saw enormous surges of COVID-19 and people were desperate to get tested and keep each other safe, Block Club showed that numerous COVID-19 pop-up testing sites were providing incorrect and sometimes fake results.
The companies behind the sites — including O’Hare Clinical Lab — were collecting hundreds of millions from the government in reimbursements and ran hundreds of sites across the United States.
Amid Block Club’s reporting, multiple companies shut down and state and federal agencies launched investigations.
