A lab owner from Morton Grove, Ill. is accused of submitting more than $60 million in false claims to Medicare as part of COVID-19 testing fraud scheme, the Chicago Tribune reported June 7.
Syed Shaukat Ahmed, 58, is accused of billing Medicare for millions of at-home COVID-19 testing kits over a less than two-month period, including tests for at least 4,000 people who were later determined to be dead, according to the report. Mr. Ahmed owned Zoom Lab Co. and Western Labs Company, which are both based in Chicago.
Federal authorities began an investigation in April 2023 after detecting a significant spike in Medicare billings for at-home tests from several Chicago-area labs, according to the report. Over a 52-day period, Mr. Ahmed billed Medicare $60.3 million for tests for more than 3 million at-home kits on behalf of 364,000 Medicare authorities.
Medicare paid out $32 million to the labs for the alleged fraudulent claims, according to the report.