Operator Of COVID-19 Testing Labs Pleads Guilty For Role In $900 Million Fraud Scheme

CHICAGO — A man who owned a medical management company that operated COVID-19 testing labs pleaded guilty on Wednesday to charges he paid a former Loretto Hospital executive’s companies tens of millions of dollars to help facilitate a fake coronavirus testing scheme.

Mohamed “Siraj” Sirajudeen operated O’Hare Clinical Lab Services — a COVID-19 testing company with locations across the country during the height of the pandemic — and owned its management company, Chicago Polyclinic. O’Hare Clinical Lab Services was inundated with complaints during the pandemic, as customers told Block Club at the time they never got their test results or saw reporting of their results delayed by weeks.

Sirajudeen’s O’Hare Clinical Lab Services was also involved in a scheme to bill the federal government almost $900 million for fake COVID-19 tests, prosecutors alleged in a 2025 indictment.

In his plea deal, Sirajudeen admitted to paying Anosh Ahmed, a former CFO and COO at the Loretto Hospital, more than $147 million to various Ahmed-owned companies from June 2021 through September 2021 as a means of securing more COVID-19 specimens to test and make billing claims to the federal government. 

O’Hare Clinical Lab Services is said to have submitted over 1.3 million claims for supposed COVID-19 testing of uninsured people during this period. Federal prosecutors allege that the scheme sought nearly $894 million in reimbursements from the federal government. About $293 million was actually paid out.  

During Wednesday’s hearing, U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman said the plea agreement was a “pretty thick one” that was 35 pages long. Sirajudeen, who wore a dark navy blue suit with pin stripes, spoke sparingly only to say “yes” when asked a question about the agreement.   

Sirajudeen will cooperate with federal prosecutors in the ongoing case against his co-defendant, Ahmed, who remains in custody in Serbia where he’s been since the fall while the United States sought his extradition. He fought the request until last week, when his attorney, Matthew Carter, told a judge he will no longer challenge the proceedings.

It’s unclear when Ahmed will be extradited back to Chicago, where he is facing charges in two cases tied to Loretto hospital, including in the scheme to defraud the federal government out of nearly $900 million via fake COVID-19 testings. In the other case, prosecutors have said he helped embezzle millions from the West Side safety net hospital.

In 2025, prosecutors charged Sirajudeen, Ahmed, Mahmood Sami Khan and Suhai Ahmad Chaudhry in the fake COVID-19 testing “scheme” that sought to defraud the federal government. Sirajudeen was charged with money laundering.

Prosecutors said Ahmed — who resigned from Loretto Hospital after a series of Block Club investigations revealed questionable conduct at the hospital — used personal data from Loretto’s patients as part of the scheme.

But in recent weeks — as the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago has faced intense scrutiny amid fallout from the botched prosecutions of a group of people arrested for protesting outside the Broadview ICE facility — the futures of the Loretto cases have appeared vulnerable, with prosecutors dropping charges against some of Ahmed’s co-defendants and making or negotiating deals with others.

Sentencing for Sirajudeen was delayed until after the federal government concludes its case against Ahmed, but prosecutors recommended 60 months in exchange for his cooperation. Coleman will make that determination at another date.

Senior Editor Kelly Bauer contributed.