Anosh Ahmed pleaded not guilty Monday in U.S. District Court to an updated indictment that alleges a scheme to obtain nearly $700 million from the federal government for fake COVID test claims. He was brought in from the Metropolitan Correctional Center for the hearing before District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman.
The new filing adds wire fraud, kickback, bribery and money laundering charges. Ahmed, the former chief financial officer of Loretto Hospital, had returned to the United States last week after two years overseas and has been jailed since then.
Dan Webb and the updated indictment
Dan Webb said he would like to resolve the case reasonably quickly and said he might file a motion for prosecutorial misconduct over possible grand jury tampering. The updated indictment was filed before Ahmed appeared Monday, and it was brought by a grand jury convened in January rather than the June 2024 grand jury that returned the earlier charges.
That sequence matters because the testing case has already moved through multiple charging rounds. Ahmed previously pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges that he embezzled $15 million from Loretto Hospital, placing him in court for the second time in four days.
Sharon Johnson Coleman and June
Coleman denied Ahmed’s earlier request to dismiss charges while he was abroad. In June, charges against Mahmood Sami Khan and Suhaib Ahmad Chaudhry were dropped after Coleman ordered an evidentiary hearing that would have forced prosecutors under Attorney Andrew Boutros to answer questions over alleged grand jury misconduct.
Ahmed’s defense may now try to build on that dispute by pressing the grand jury issue again. If Webb files the misconduct motion, the case could turn to whether the January grand jury process gives the defense another path to challenge the indictment before trial.
Mohamed “Siraj” Sirajudeen deal
Earlier this month, Mohamed “Siraj” Sirajudeen pleaded guilty to attempting to defraud the federal government of $900 million through the same fake COVID-19 testing scheme. He admitted to paying more than $147 million to various Ahmed-owned companies from June 2021 through September 2021 as a way of securing more COVID-19 specimens to test.
Sirajudeen will cooperate with federal prosecutors against Ahmed, adding pressure to a case already shaped by overlapping indictments and the earlier June ruling. The immediate question for Ahmed is whether the defense uses the grand jury issue to slow the case or whether the prosecution pushes ahead on the new fraud counts.
