Zishan Alvi, the owner of a medical testing laboratory in Chicago, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud on Monday, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice. Alvi’s facility, known as LabElite, was releasing negative covid-19 test results to patients that either weren’t performed or were inconclusive. The only reason anyone figured it out was that some patients received positive tests while waiting on their results from LabElite and were confused about the contradictory information from the Chicago lab.
In a court filing from 2023, prosecutors laid out how Alvi submitted roughly $83 million in false claims to the Department of Health and Human Resources sub-agency known as Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) from February 2021 to February 2022. The lab offered PCR and rapid tests for covid starting in late 2020, during the first year of the pandemic.
Alvi’s lab was raided by the FBI in February 2022 and the 45-year-old pleaded guilty this week to $14 million worth of fraud, acknowledging that he knowingly submitted false claims to HRSA, according to a DOJ press release.
As Ars Technica notes, Alvi bought a bunch of cars and stashed his ill-gotten winnings in both traditional bank accounts and a Coinbase account. The cars are listed in the indictment as: a 2021 Mercedes-Benz GLB 250, a 2021 Land Rover Range Rover HSE, a 2021 Lamborghini Urus, A 2021 Bentley, and a 2022 Tesla X.
“The defendant defrauded the American people at a time when we were most vulnerable, in the midst of a global pandemic. This indictment shows that the FBI along with our law enforcement partners is continually working to keep Americans safe and uphold the Constitution as our mission demands of us,” Robert W. Wheeler, Jr., Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office at the FBI, said in a statement back in 2023 when the indictment was first made public.
Alvi faces up to 20 years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced on February 7, 2025. Roughly 1.2 million Americans have died from the covid-19 pandemic, and the virus continues to circulate. And government reimbursement money aside, it’s incredibly unethical to be handing out fake test results to anyone for any reason.
“It is absolutely reprehensible that the defendant would use a public health crisis to allegedly defraud taxpayers and further put public health at risk by providing fraudulent COVID-19 test results,” Attorney General Kwame Raoul said in a press release.
“I want to thank the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General, and all of the law enforcement partners working to hold those who perpetrated this scheme accountable.”
