The co-owner of a Chicago-based laboratory has pleaded guilty for his role in a COVID testing scam that raked in millions — through which he bought stocks, cryptocurrency and several luxury cars while still having more than $6 million in his personal bank to stand. account.
Zishan Alvi, 45, of Inverness, Illinois, co-owned LabElite, which federal prosecutors say billed the federal government for COVID-19 tests that were either never conducted or were conducted with purposefully inadequate components to making them useless. Customers who got tested at LabElite – sometimes to get permission to travel or interact with vulnerable people – did not receive results or results indicating they were negative for the deadly virus.
The scam, which ran from approximately February 2021 to approximately February 2022, totaled more than $83 million in fraudulent payments from the federal government's Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which covered the cost of COVID-19 testing for people without insurance during the period covered. peak of the pandemic. Local media reports indicated that people seeking testing at LabElite were discouraged from providing health insurance information.
In February 2022, the FBI raided LabElite's testing site in Chicago, amid a crackdown on several large-scale fraudulent COVID testing programs. In March 2023, Alvi was indicted by a federal grand jury on ten counts of bank fraud and one count of theft of public funds. The indictment sought forfeiture of his ill-gotten wealth, which was detailed in the indictment.
The listing included five vehicles: a 2021 Mercedes-Benz, a 2021 Land Rover Range Rover HSE, a 2021 Lamborghini Urus, a 2021 Bentley and a 2022 Tesla account, approximately $500,000 in a Fidelity Investments account and $245,814 in a Coinbase account. Finally, there was $6,825,089 in Alvi's personal bank account.
On Monday, the Justice Department announced a deal in which Alvi pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud, taking responsibility for $14 million in fraudulent HRSA claims. He now faces a prison sentence of up to 20 years and will be sentenced on February 7, 2025.
