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.
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