After two years overseas, former Loretto Hospital executive Anosh Ahmed will remain jailed for now as he awaits trial in two cases alleging he bilked money from the West Side safety-net facility and later ran a massive COVID-19 testing scam.
Ahmed, who was living in Dubai when the charges came down and was arrested last year in Serbia, was brought back to Chicago this week after dropping his extradition fight.
His first court appearance Friday afternoon lasted 16 minutes in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Young Kim.
Ahmed appeared calm as he stood before Kim in an orange jail outfit and slip-ons and Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur walked through both sets of charges against him. The most severe of the counts against him carry a 20-year prison sentence and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines if convicted.
Ahmed kept his hands clasped behind his back and spoke only to confirm that he understood his basic rights, the charges and the possible penalties he could face if convicted. Throughout the hearing, Kim addressed him as “Dr. Ahmed.”
MacArthur said prosecutors were seeking to have Ahmed detained pending trial. His defense attorney, Dan Webb, said Ahmed would waive his right to a detention hearing for now, but could raise the issue of bond at a later date.
Webb entered a plea of not guilty on Ahmed’s behalf on the charges involving the Loretto fraud. Ahmed is due in court again on Monday, when he’s scheduled to be arraigned on the COVID fraud indictment.
Much has changed on the ground in Chicago since Ahmed left town for Dubai as investigations swirled around him. Earlier this year, the federal prosecutor who headed the investigation was accused of misconduct before the “Broadview Six” grand jury, causing that case to collapse in spectacular fashion and leading to an ongoing scandal over mistrust of the U.S. attorney’s office.
Since then, it’s been revealed that the prosecutor, Sheri Mecklenburg, committed similar alleged conduct in the grand jury that indicted Ahmed and several co-defendants. As a result, charges were dropped against two others in the COVID fraud case, while two of Ahmed’s former colleagues at Loretto recently received generous deferred prosecution deals that will leave them without a conviction.
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With Ahmed now here to face the charges against him, his high-powered legal team will undoubtedly be looking to get the cases against him dismissed on similar grounds.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman, who oversees the COVID-related case, previously told Ahmed’s lawyers that once he’s arraigned, they could renew requests for a full evidentiary hearing on what led to the indictment, which could force the testimony of Mecklenburg and top brass in the U.S. attorney’s office.
On Thursday, however, the day Ahmed entered custody in Chicago, prosecutors secured a new indictment from a different grand jury that could stave off any further inquiry.
That 15-count indictment names only Ahmed and largely mirrors the previous allegations. Prosecutors are seeking forfeiture of more than $50 million in cash seized from various accounts related to Ahmed, as well as two Rolls-Royces, a Lamborghini, a Mercedes and three luxury properties in Houston.
So far, only one conviction has come out of the sweeping fraud investigation of Loretto’s former executives.
Chicago lab owner Mohamed Sirajudeen, who is cooperating with prosecutors, pleaded guilty earlier this month to helping Ahmed generate tens of millions of dollars in government reimbursements over a two-month period in 2021, much of which was for COVID tests that were never performed.
In the other indictment, former Loretto CEO George Miller Jr. and ex-executive Heather Bergdahl have each received deferred prosecution deals. Charges are pending against a fourth defendant, medical supply company owner Sameer Suhail, who had also left Chicago for Dubai before the indictment was brought in 2025.
According to prosecutors, 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 that 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. He also filed 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.
The investigation was sparked after the West Side safety net hospital came under fire for improperly doling out COVID-19 vaccinations soon after the shots became available. In 2021, following reporting by Block Club Chicago and WBEZ, Loretto admitted it had improperly vaccinated workers at Trump Tower in downtown Chicago and had also improperly given shots to Cook County judges at a time when the vaccines were still scarce.
In 2024, Ahmed was accused of embezzling at least $15 million from the hospital over a five-year period, including at the height of the pandemic, by causing payments to vendor companies for purported goods and services that they knew had not been provided.
By the time those charges were filed, Ahmed was already in Dubai, which has no formal extradition treaty with the U.S..
While living in Dubai, Ahmed waged a strange public relations campaign that appeared aimed at rebuilding his image and possibly courting the attention of President Donald Trump, who has granted executive clemency in a number of notable Chicago-area cases, from Gangster Disciples boss Larry Hoover to former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
In a series of press releases blasted over newswires, Ahmed touted himself as a Chicago-based entrepreneur determined to break the cycle of poverty by bringing high-tech jobs to the city’s historically underserved West Side.
Many of the releases included a media contact identified as Meghan Trump. The phone number listed turned out to be the main switchboard for the Trump International Hotel in Chicago, where Ahmed used to own a condo.
One release claimed Ahmed was significantly upping his contributions in Chicago, supporting free health screenings and mental health support as well as “launching a daily $1,000 cash relief giveaway” to needy families.
“I hope to inspire families and professionals worldwide to create a legacy that makes positive ripples in the world at large,” Ahmed was quoted as saying on his website.
Ahmed was arrested on an international warrant in Serbia on Nov. 30, records show.