One day after a federal judge threatened to hold a hearing that could have put Chicago U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros on the witness stand, Boutros’ office moved to avoid it by permanently dropping charges against two defendants in a massive $300 million fraud prosecution.
The late Thursday development means damage from the tainted “Broadview Six” case, which nearly went to trial as a misdemeanor matter, has now officially spread to a far more serious prosecution involving former Loretto Hospital chief financial officer Anosh Ahmed.
The feds are not dropping charges against Ahmed, who has been held in Serbia and is fighting extradition. Rather, they moved Thursday to drop charges against two co-defendants who once worked for him: Mahmood Sami Khan and Suhaib Ahmad Chaudhry.
Still, Boutros’ office now appears to be dropping criminal charges to avoid sworn testimony about the scandal that has rocked the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in the last three weeks. A Boutros spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman forced the issue Wednesday, when she said she would hold such a hearing June 17 and told the feds they had one way out. The judge didn’t say out loud how the hearing could be avoided, but she said a prosecutor would know what to do.
Most likely, the judge meant Boutros’ office would have to permanently drop charges against Khan and Chaudhry. Now they’ve done so, a little more than 24 hours later. But the move will likely add to what another judge said is a “credibility crisis” created by Boutros’ leadership team.
Coleman must still agree to grant the feds’ motion dropping the charges — and cancel next week’s hearing.
This all comes exactly three weeks after Boutros announced the permanent dismissal of charges against the remaining defendants in the prosecution of the “Broadview Six,” a case filed last fall that began with a conspiracy indictment against six Operation Midway Blitz protesters.
Later pared down to a misdemeanor matter against four of those protestors, Boutros dropped the case entirely May 21 after U.S. District Judge April Perry discovered apparent misconduct by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg during grand jury proceedings in that case.
The allegations included Mecklenburg improperly putting her credibility on the line to support criminal charges, wrongly dismissing grand jurors from the proceedings, and having conversations with grand jurors outside the grand jury room.
Perry said the problematic behavior had also been redacted out of transcripts given to her by the feds. Boutros told the judge he’d learned of the improprieties in late April.
The revelations led to a review of other cases handled by Mecklenburg, including high-profile prosecutions tied to Loretto Hospital.
The case involving Khan and Chaudhry “arises out of a single, widespread scheme to submit more than $800 million in false claims to the United States Health Resources and Services Administration … for reimbursement of COVID-19 testing of uninsured individuals,” Mecklenburg wrote earlier this year.
The scheme lasted from June 2021 through March 2022, “when the government program ran out of money,” she added.
The false claims resulted in payouts totaling $293 million, according to the indictment.
Days after the “Broadview Six” case fell apart, defense attorneys for Khan and Chaudhry accused Mecklenburg of misconduct similar to what happened in the case involving the protesters. The attorneys also accused Mecklenburg of “inflammatory characterizations of the defendants, including name-calling and folk-wisdom metaphors.”
Coleman took the bench to address those claims Wednesday, making clear she planned to hold a hearing and inviting defense attorneys to think about who they’d like to put on the witness stand.
“I’m a lifelong prosecutor,” Coleman told lawyers in the courtroom. “Federal and state level. I know this circle. I know this sphere. And so the court wants to do right by this.”
The judge also told a prosecutor representing Boutros’ office that there are “a lot of people in your sphere that I’m assuming are going to be asked to come testify.”
And, she told the prosecutor, “you may want to avoid that.”