A 52-year-old Schaumburg man who co-owns a suburban Chicago laboratory has been indicted on five counts of federal wire fraud, accused of fabricating negative results for an estimated 380,000 COVID-19 tests to bill a federal pandemic program $66.2 million. Rajesh Patel's laboratory, located in Hillside, Illinois, allegedly collected roughly $44.1 million in payouts from the scheme, with Patel personally pocketing an estimated $28 million.
A federal grand jury returned the indictment against Patel on October 19, according to the FBI, as reported by Cleveland.com. The five-count indictment, filed in Chicago, details specific claims submitted to the HRSA Uninsured Program, each seeking $185 per fake test and yielding federal reimbursements of $123.46 per test, according to CWB Chicago. That outlet's reporting puts the number of allegedly faked tests at roughly 380,000, while Cleveland.com cites an estimated 368,000 — figures that differ slightly between the two accounts.
Prosecutors allege the scheme began in March 2021, when Patel's laboratory entered into an agreement with Meridian Medical Staffing Inc. to collect test specimens, paying the staffing company tens of millions of dollars for the work. Meridian was supposed to provide specimens and biological information from real patients, but prosecutors say many of the purported patients either never existed or never actually submitted test specimens. Patel then allegedly generated fake negative PCR results in the lab's system to justify billing claims submitted from May 2021 through April 2022.
A Federal Program Built for the Uninsured
The HRSA Uninsured Program reimbursed healthcare providers for testing people without health coverage. The program abruptly stopped accepting COVID-19 testing claims on March 22, 2022, after exhausting its congressional funding allocation, according to a Business Wire report from March 2022.
Court filings identify the Hillside laboratory co-owned by Patel only as Laboratory A, though public records show Patel remained listed on the company's executive leadership page as chief operating officer at the time of his October indictment, per CWB Chicago's reporting. Colin M. McDonald, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's fraud division, said Patel allegedly exploited a global crisis for personal gain by fabricating hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 tests and billing taxpayers. McDonald added that the fraud division will pursue and prosecute people who steal from taxpayers.
Defense Pushes Back on Allegations
Patel's defense attorney, Beau Brindley, stated that his client is not guilty of any crimes and was unjustly and unfairly accused, adding that the defense team will demonstrate Patel committed no wrongdoing whatsoever, according to the Daily Herald. Patel faces up to 20 years in prison on each of the five wire fraud counts, meaning he could face up to 100 years in prison across all five charges if convicted, though actual sentences are determined by federal judges applying sentencing guidelines.
The Case Ties to a Larger Conspiracy
Patel's indictment connects directly to an earlier case against Jamil Elkoussa, president of Meridian Medical Staffing Inc., whose indictment federal prosecutors filed on June 23, 2025, on five counts of wire fraud. Elkoussa allegedly generated fake specimen collections that directed $233 million in bogus claims to the same Hillside laboratory, resulting in $60.3 million transferred back to him, according to Patch. That case emerged from a broader federal probe into pandemic-era fraud connected to Chicago's Loretto Hospital, a safety-net facility on the city's West Side that led to charges against multiple hospital figures, including its former chief financial officer, as detailed by Becker's Hospital Review.
The Patel indictment lands amid a string of major COVID-19 testing fraud prosecutions across the Chicago area. The July 2025 federal health care fraud crackdown that ensnared Elkoussa marked the largest enforcement action in Northern District of Illinois history, with 13 local defendants charged in schemes alleging more than $1.83 billion in fraudulent claims, according to the Department of Justice.
