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Chicago Lab Owner Gets 7 Years for COVID-19 Testing Fraud


A Chicago lab owner, Zishan Alvi, 46, from Inverness, Illinois, was just sentenced to seven years in prison for a massive COVID-19 testing fraud scheme.

From 2021 to 2022, Alvi ran a lab in Chicago that supposedly performed COVID-19 tests. But he was actually submitting fake bills to a government program called the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). He charged them for tests that either never happened or were done so badly they were useless.

Here's where it gets really bad: Alvi’s lab would give people negative test results even when they hadn't actually tested the samples, or the results were unclear because he'd watered down the tests to save money. He knew he was giving out bogus results but still sent the bills to HRSA. This scam ended up costing the government over $14 million. He even lied to his own lab directors to keep his fraud a secret.

Alvi pleaded guilty to wire fraud last September. Besides going to prison, he has to pay back all $14,199,217 he stole. He's also losing about $6.8 million in cash, a 2021 Range Rover HSE, and over $630,000 from an E-Trade account.
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