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COVID Testing Lab Owner Zishan Alvi Allegedly Pocketed $83M, Gave False Negatives

A Chicago testing lab owner has been federally indicted after allegedly telling lab employees to send out false negatives without testing samples.

A Chicago man has been federally indicted for allegedly running a bogus COVID testing lab that sent out made-up results while pocketing $83 million to spend on cars and crypto. Zishan Alvi, 44, has been charged with 10 counts of wire fraud and one count of theft of government funds for allegedly scheming to “defraud and to obtain money and property” through false COVID tests between February 2021 and February 2022, according to the indictment. Alvi allegedly told employees to give customers negative results without even testing their samples at the height of the Omicron surge, prosecutors said. Even when the lab found positive results later, they wouldn’t inform customers due to the false negatives they’d send out, according to prosecutors. When his bank account was seized by the feds, Alvi had more than $6.8 million and more than $245,000 in a Coinbase account—in addition to several luxury cars, including a 2021 Mercedes-Benz, a 2021 Lamborghini Urus, and a 2022 Tesla. Alvi faces up to 20 years in prison for each count of wire fraud and 10 years for the count of theft.