A suburban Chicago businessman has been charged for allegedly swindling more than $2.6 million from hospitals who paid him to supply them with personal protective equipment, the U.S. Justice Department said Nov. 10.
Dennis Haggerty along with two business partners created a company called At Diagnostics in March of this year to sell PPE, according to the complaint. Mr. Haggerty was president of the company.
Two large university hospitals, one in Chicago and the other in Iowa City, Iowa, ordered a combined 1 million masks from the company. As a deposit, the hospitals paid more than $3 million into a bank account Mr. Haggerty allegedly falsely claimed was an At Diagnostics account, but was actually solely controlled by him.
Mr. Haggerty allegedly then spent part of the hospitals' money for his own personal benefit, including purchasing two Maseratis and a Land Rover.
When At Diagnostics didn't deliver the masks on time, Mr. Haggerty allegedly claimed to one hospital that his bank had no record of the payment being received. His business partners confronted him about the money, and he altered a bank statement to make it seem the money had never been received, the complaint states.
Mr. Haggerty has not returned more than $2.6 million of the money the hospitals paid for the masks that were never delivered, according to the Justice Department. He has been charged with one count of wire fraud and faces up to 20 years in prison.
Read the Justice Department's full news release here.