Lab owner gets 7 years in prison for faking COVID-19 test results
June 19 (UPI) -- The owner of a Chicago laboratory was sentenced to seven years in prison for his role in a $14 million scheme of falsifying COVID-19 test results.
Zishan, Alvi, 46 of Inverness, Ill., was sentenced Wednesday for the scheme and was ordered to pay $14 million in illegitimate taxpayer-backed payments.
The fraud involved releasing negative test results to patients, even when the laboratory had not conducted the tests, or the results had been diluted by Alvi to save on costs.
U.S. District Judge John Tharp sentenced Alvi and called his actions "fraud on a massive scale," and said how it also put the public in unsafe circumstances when they were seeking reassurance through testing.
"People were scrambling to get tested for COVID because they didn't want to imperil the safety and health of the people they cared about," Tharp said.
"A negative test was like a passport, 'You know, I tested negative. I can go see my grandma, I can go see my children with their newborn baby.' These were people who depended on that report to govern what they could safely do and not do."
Alvi knew the laboratory was faking results, but Alvi still reported it back to the Health and Human Services' Health Resources and Services Administration, prosecutors said.
Alvi stood at the lectern before he was sentenced and told the judge how he was "filled with remorse and a deep sense of regret" for his "selfish decisions."
"I should never have put profits ahead of the job we intended to do for the public," Alvi said, as several relatives wiped tears from their eyes in the courtroom gallery. "I should have put the people first."
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