Illinois Lab Executive Charged With Billing $66 Million for COVID Tests Prosecutors Say Were Never Run
Prosecutors say Rajesh Patel created fake negative results for at least 380,000 PCR tests at a Hillside, Illinois, lab so it could bill a federal program.
A suburban Chicago laboratory executive has been charged with billing a federal COVID-19 program about $66.2 million for hundreds of thousands of PCR tests that, prosecutors say, his lab never ran.
A federal grand jury in Chicago indicted Rajesh “Raj” Patel, 52, of Schaumburg, Illinois, on Oct. 19, 2026, on five counts of wire fraud, the Justice Department said. The case, No. 1:26-cr-00540, is assigned to U.S. District Judge Steven C. Seeger. The allegations have not been proven in court.
The lab and the specimen deal
The nine-page indictment does not name the lab. It calls it “Laboratory A,” a clinical laboratory in Hillside, Illinois, that processed PCR tests during the pandemic, and says Patel was its chief operating officer. The Justice Department described him as the lab’s co-owner and chief operating officer.
In around March 2021, the lab signed an agreement with Meridian Medical Staffing Inc. to test specimens that Meridian said it had collected from patients at its collection sites, according to the indictment. The lab paid Meridian at least about $60.3 million for the specimens and for the patient information it then used to bill the government.
Many of those patients “either did not exist or never submitted COVID-19 test specimens to Meridian,” the indictment says. Only Patel is charged in it.
What prosecutors say Patel did
Between about May 2021 and April 2022, Patel created fake “negative” results in the lab’s computer system for at least about 380,000 PCR tests on Meridian specimens that the lab never completed, the indictment alleges. He then released those results so they could be sent to the supposed patients and so the lab could bill for the tests, prosecutors say.
The bills went to the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Uninsured Program, which paid for COVID-19 testing for people without health insurance. Providers had to certify that the information on each claim was true. The program stopped taking testing claims after March 22, 2022, for lack of funds, the law firm Foley & Lardner wrote at the time.
According to the indictment, the lab submitted at least about $66.2 million in false claims to the program and was paid at least about $44.1 million. Patel then transferred about $28 million from the lab’s account into accounts the indictment calls “the Raj Patel Accounts,” prosecutors say.
The indictment also says Patel tried to hide the scheme by telling others to leave the Meridian tests out of the results the lab reported to the Illinois Department of Public Health. The state required labs to report every COVID-19 result for Illinois residents, positive or negative.
Five claims, $185 each
Each of the five counts is built on a single claim. All five were for tests with service dates in November and December 2021, billed between Dec. 31, 2021, and Feb. 17, 2022. The lab billed $185 for each and was paid $123.46, the indictment says. The claims were processed through a server in Minnesota, according to the indictment.
Each count carries a maximum of 20 years in prison. The indictment also seeks forfeiture of any proceeds traced to the scheme.
“This defendant allegedly exploited a global crisis for personal gain, fabricating hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 tests – then billing the taxpayer for it,” said Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s Fraud Division.
The FBI’s Chicago field office and the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General investigated the case. Trial Attorney Claire Sobczak Pacelli of the Fraud Division’s Health Care Fraud Section is prosecuting it.
