Florida man with ties to Loretto Hospital indicted in massive $233 million COVID fraud scheme

Chicago Tribune

a day ago

A Florida man with ties to Loretto Hospital on Chicago's West Side has been charged in a massive conspiracy to fraudulently bill the federal government for more than $200 million in COVID-19 tests that were actually never performed.
Jamil Elkoussa, 35, who currently resides in Orlando, is the latest to be charged in a fraud scheme involving the small West Side safety-net hospital that became a lighting rod of controversy during the coronavirus pandemic for administering vaccinations to connected insiders and paying millions in contracts to companies with close ties to facility administrators.
The indictment made public Monday charges Elkoussa with five counts of wire fraud and seeks forfeiture of a $4.9 million home in Miami, as well as properties in Alsip, Burr Ridge, Homer Glen and South Holland. A lawyer for Elkoussa could not immediately be reached.
An arrest warrant was issued for Elkoussa last week, records show. It was not immediately clear if he was in custody, and no court dates had been entered on the docket as of Monday.
According to the charges, Elkoussa was head of a company called Meridian Medical Staffing in 2022 when he contracted with Individual A, the owner of Laboratory A in Hillside, and others to provide specimens purportedly collected from patients for COVID-19 'PCR' tests.
Elkoussa claimed that many of the tests were collected at Loretto, as well as another Chicago-area hospital and other sites in Florida, the indictment alleged. His co-conspirators then used the phony data provided by Elkoussa to submit bills to the Health Resources and Services Administration, which at the time provided reimbursement for tests on uninsured patients, according to the indictment.
In all, Elkoussa caused more than $233 million to be fraudulently billed to the HSRA, resulting in more than $150 million in taxpayer-funded payments to Laboratory A, according to the charges. The lab then kicked tens of millions of dollars in the ill-gotten proceeds back to Meridian, the charges alleged.
Elkoussa is the 8th person to be charged so far in the wide-ranging investigation initiated after Loretto 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.
Also charged are former Loretto CEO George Miller, ex-Loretto executives Anosh Ahmed and Heather Bergdahl, and associates Sameer Suhail, Mohamed Sirajudeen, Mahmood Sami Khan, and Suhaib Ahmad Chaudhry.
Ahmed and Suhail fled to Dubai before they were charged last year and have not returned, court records show. Miller and Bergdahl have pleaded not guilty. Arraignments for the others are pending.