CHICAGO — A local man ran a COVID-19 testing lab where workers tossed tests and gave people false results while the company raked in $83 million from the federal government — and he used the money for cars, stocks and cryptocurrency, according to a federal indictment.
Zishan Alvi, 44, of suburban Inverness, is facing 10 counts of wire fraud and a count of theft of government funds, with federal prosecutors saying he got money from the government by making fake claims for tests that were never performed, were done incorrectly or for which a client had already paid. Alvi co-owned and ran the LabElite testing company in Chicago.
Block Club reported in March 2022 that FBI and other law enforcement agents had raided LabElite’s Norwood Park headquarters, and the lab had racked up numerous complaints with federal and state officials.
The indictment against Alvi, released Monday evening, alleges he and others set up a “scheme to defraud and to obtain money and property” through incorrect COVID-19 testing during some of the hardest days of the pandemic.
Alvi’s lab sought reimbursement from the federal government for tests Alvi knew had not been performed, for tests the lab had “modified” so the results weren’t reliable and for tests already paid for by customers, prosecutors said.
Alvi also directed the lab to give customers a negative result if they’d paid for expedited results — even when he knew the test had not actually been run on their sample, prosecutors said.
Alvi used the...
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