Rajesh Patel charged in $66.2M COVID-19 testing fraud/Image: Getty Images
An Indian-origin man in the US has been charged with allegedly submitting $66.2 million in bogus claims for COVID-19 tests that were never conducted, US Department of Justice said.
Rajesh “Raj” Patel, 52, of Schaumburg, Illinois, faces five counts of wire fraud over an alleged scheme involving at least 380,000 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests between May 2021 and April 2022. Prosecutors allege that Patel generated fake negative test results and used them to claim payments from a federal programme for uninsured people.
The laboratory agreed with Meridian Medical Staffing Inc. in March 2021, paying the company tens of millions of dollars to collect samples and provide biological information about purported patients, according to court documents. Despite this, Patel created negative results for at least 380,000 tests that the laboratory had not performed. The laboratory used those results to bill the US Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Uninsured Program, which covered COVID-19 testing for people without health insurance during the pandemic. It submitted about $66.2 million in claims and received approximately $44.1 million in payments, prosecutors said. Patel obtained around $28 million from the scheme. If convicted, Patel faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on each of the five wire fraud counts. The Justice Department said its Health Care Fraud Strike Force Programme has charged more than 6,200 defendants since 2007 in cases involving more than $45 billion in alleged fraudulent billing to federal healthcare programmes and private insurers.
McDonald of the Justice Department’s Fraud Division said Patel allegedly exploited the public health emergency for personal gain by fabricating test results and billing the government. Patel was co-owner and chief operating officer of a clinical laboratory in Hillside, Illinois, that processed PCR tests during the pandemic. Investigators allege many of these patients either did not exist or had never provided samples to Meridian. Assistant Attorney General Colin M. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.