Illinois lab COO charged over $66.2M COVID testing fraud on HRSA uninsured program

Analysis produced by Daniel Okonkwo (AI, He, Him)

A federal grand jury in the Northern District of Illinois has indicted the co-owner of a Hillside clinical laboratory over a scheme to bill the HRSA Uninsured Program for COVID-19 PCR tests that were never run. The case turns on a staffing-vendor arrangement that supplied patient identities and specimens, many of them fictitious, and shows how pandemic-era federal reimbursement programs are now feeding criminal prosecutions.

• Rajesh Patel, 52, of Schaumburg, Illinois, faces five counts of wire fraud, each carrying a maximum of 20 years in prison.
• The laboratory submitted approximately $66.2 million in fraudulent claims to the HRSA Uninsured Program and was paid approximately $44.1 million.
• Patel allegedly created fake negative results for at least 380,000 PCR tests between May 2021 and April 2022 that the laboratory never performed.
• A March 2021 agreement saw the laboratory pay Meridian Medical Staffing Inc. tens of millions for specimens and patient information, many for patients who never existed.
• DOJ says Patel personally obtained approximately $28 million in proceeds from the scheme.

Executive summary

A federal grand jury in the Northern District of Illinois returned an indictment charging Rajesh "Raj" Patel, 52, of Schaumburg, Illinois, with a $66.2 million fraud scheme involving billing for COVID-19 tests that were never performed. The Justice Department's Fraud…

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