CHICAGO (WGN) – The owner of a laboratory in Chicago has been sentenced to seven years in prison for his role in a COVID-19 testing fraud scheme.
Court documents said 46-year-old Zishan Alvi of Inverness, Illinois, owned and operated a lab in Chicago that conducted testing for COVID-19. In 2021 and 2022, Alvi submitted claims to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) for COVID-19 tests that were either not performed at all or not performed correctly.
Furthermore, as part of the scheme the laboratory released negative COVID-19 test results to patients, even though the laboratory either had not tested the specimens or the results were inconclusive because Alvi diluted them to save on costs, thus rendering the tests unreliable, according to court documents…