A Chicago lab owner pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiring with fugitive ex-Loretto Hospital executive Anosh Ahmed in a COVID-19 testing fraud scheme that generated tens of millions of dollars in government reimbursements over a two-month period in 2021, much of which was for tests that were never performed.
During a change-of-plea hearing for Mohamed Sirajudeen, 54, it was revealed for the first time he has been cooperating with prosecutors in the case for months, a posture that likely precluded him from joining two co-defendants in getting the charges dismissed due to fallout from the ongoing “Broadview Six” scandal.
In pleading guilty to conspiracy, Sirajudeen agreed to pay nearly $80 million in restitution to the government as well as about $13.7 million in federal and local tax losses. He also will forfeit a 4,000-square-foot, three-bedroom condominium on the 43rd floor of the Trump Tower in Chicago, valued at about $2.8 million.
Sirajudeen could be called to testify against Ahmed, whose attorneys recently announced he would drop his extradition fight and return to the U.S. to face the charges.
Sirajudeen’s guilty plea marks the first conviction in a sprawling case that began to unravel earlier this year due to alleged misconduct by a federal prosecutor in the grand jury.
That prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg, also handled the now-defunct Broadview Six case against a group of Operation Midway Blitz protesters, where Mecklenburg was accused of a series of missteps before the grand jury that led to the dismissal of charges in May.
A few weeks later, prosecutors abruptly dropped all charges against two of Sirajudeen’s two co-defendants, Suhaib Ahmad Chaudhry and Mahmood Sami Kahn, which averted an evidentiary hearing on the alleged prosecutorial misconduct that could have forced top officials in the U.S. attorney’s office to testify.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman denied Ahmed’s own bid to force a hearing, citing his refusal to submit to the jurisdiction of her court even though he’s likely been aware for years of charges against him in Chicago in two separate cases.
But Coleman was also clear that Ahmed would be allowed to renew his motion to dismiss on prosecutorial misconduct grounds should he return to Chicago to face the charges — a move that Ahmed’s lawyers now say could come as soon as late August.
According to the indictment, Ahmed used patient information obtained from a variety of sources, including Loretto, to generate false claims that were submitted through Sirajudeen’s Chicago-based lab, O’Hare Clinical Lab Services, as well as labs in Texas that Ahmed owned but which were not operational.
In his 35-page plea agreement with prosecutors, Sirajudeen admitted he knew that his lab “had not conducted many of the PCR tests” that were reflected in patient spreadsheets sent in by Ahmed, but that his company paid Ahmed and submitted them for reimbursement anyway.
Over a two-month period beginning in July 2021, Sirajudeen’s lab submitted about $238 million in reimbursement requests to the Department of Health and Human Services, about $65 million of which was paid, according to the plea agreement.
Another $185 million worth of reimbursement requests was ultimately not processed because of an unrelated suspension in the program, according to the plea.
In February 2022, worried that the government was onto him, Ahmed approached Sirajudeen with a scheme to cover up what was happening, according to the plea agreement.
Sirajudeen agreed to help Ahmed fabricate records to hide the true nature of the kickback payments, including creating a phony, backdated licensing agreement, fake invoices for personal protection equipment and other goods and services that were never provided, and filing a false security note with Cook County to make it look like some payments O’Hare made directly to Ahmed were connected to a loan that did not actually exist, according to the plea.
Coleman did not set a sentencing date for Sirajudeen as his cooperation in the case continues. A status hearing was set for Dec. 10.
Meanwhile, Ahmed remains charged in a separate case involving fraud at Loretto Hospital itself that also has been significantly weakened by the allegations of grand jury misconduct.
More Top Picks Best Red Light Therapy Panels For Seniors
Last month, one of the defendants, Heather Bergdahl, a close friend of Ahmed’s, entered into a deferred prosecution deal that will likely leave her without a felony conviction.
A similar deal was also being finalized for former Loretto CEO George Miller, prosecutors have said. A third defendant, medical supply executive Sameer Suhail, was also in “negotiations” with the government to resolve his charges short of trial, according to court records.
The group was accused of embezzling at least $15 million from the West Side safety net hospital over a five-year period, including at the height of the COVID-19 crisis, by causing payments to vendor companies for purported goods and services that they knew had not been provided.
Both Ahmed and Suhail were living in Dubai by the time the charges came down. Suhail returned to the U.S. earlier this year and has pleaded not guilty.
Ahmed, meanwhile, has been held in a jail in Belgrade, Serbia, since his arrest there on Nov. 30.