A Chicago safety-net hospital’s former chief financial officer and chief transformation officer have been charged for their alleged roles in a scheme to embezzle over $15 million from the nonprofit, the Department of Justice announced Friday.
From at least April 2018 to May 2022, law enforcement said that Anosh Ahmed, 40, and Heather Bergdahl, 37, collaborated with a third defendant, medical supply company owner Sameer Suhail, M.D., 47, and others to issue payments from the hospital to fake vendors for goods and services that were never received.
Those funds made their way to entities and accounts controlled by the defendants, DOJ wrote in a superceding indictment, and were concealed by “fictitious documents” such as invoices and receipts created by the defendants.
Of note, Bergdahl allegedly opened and secured fraudulent deposits in bank accounts that used the names of two legitimate hospital vendors “because she wanted to conceal her association” with the scheme, DOJ wrote.
The DOJ charged the trio with eight counts of wire fraud, four counts of embezzlement, 11 counts of aiding and abetting embezzlement and three counts of money laundering. Arraignments in federal court have not yet been scheduled.
Ahmed was hired on at the 147-bed Loretto Hospital in late 2017 as chief operating officer before taking on the chief financial officer role in 2018. Bergdahl, a former colleague of Ahmed, joined in early 2020 as chief transformation officer and a supervisor of the hospital’s accounts payable department. Ahmed resigned from the hospital in early 2021, while Berdahl departed her role in early 2022.
Suhail owned and operated multiple medical supply and service organizations, according to the indictment. He is currently the CEO and founder of Foresight Hospital and Health Systems, a Chicago-based healthcare provider services company founded in 2022.
The indictment also refers to other unnamed individuals who were involved in the scheme. One of these, referred to as “Employee A,” has a listed employment timeline that aligns with Loretto’s former CEO, George Miller.
Ahmed and Miller came under scrutiny from the hospital’s board amid a federal grand jury investigation into the hospital’s COVID-19 vaccination program, which had improperly vaccinated ineligible individuals. The new charges also stem from that investigation.
Bergdahl was charged earlier this year for allegations of embezzling almost half a million from the hospital. She was arrested on May 9 after having boarded a private jet in Houston heading for Dubai. Ahmed fled to Dubai earlier this year, per Chicago Tribune sources familiar with the case.
Publisher: Source link
