Loretto Hospital’s indicted former chief financial officer has returned to the United States from overseas and is being held in Chicago’s federal jail, arriving just as a new grand jury accused him of scamming the federal government out of roughly $200 million.
Anosh Ahmed may now try to take advantage of a monthslong scandal in the office of U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros to escape charges that have hung over his head for years, though no such motion has been filed yet. The scandal involves alleged prosecutorial misconduct before grand jurors, and it led to the collapse of the “Broadview Six” case against a group of Operation Midway Blitz protesters.
The feds will likely use the new indictment against Ahmed, handed up Thursday, to diffuse any claims of wrongdoing before grand jurors. It replaces an indictment brought against him in 2025 that was tainted by the scandal.
The judge who presides over that matter is clearly bothered by the misconduct allegations. But she declined last month to grant Ahmed any relief until he returned to Chicago to face criminal charges. He soon agreed to stop fighting extradition to the United States after being arrested in Serbia last November.
Ahmed, 42, also faces charges in a separate case.
Prosecutors have said Ahmed left Chicago for France and Dubai in August 2023 after becoming aware of the investigation against him. His attorneys denied he was a fugitive, saying his return to the United States was delayed because of “several significant family health issues.”
Ahmed wore orange jail garb Friday afternoon when he appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Young Kim. Former Chicago U.S. Attorney Dan Webb appeared on Ahmed’s behalf, telling the judge his client “enters a plea of not guilty to each and every count” in an indictment handed up against him in 2024.
The former hospital executive remains in custody for now, and he faces arraignment on the new indictment Monday in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman. He’s being held at the downtown Metropolitan Correctional Center.
The 2024 indictment alleges Ahmed and others schemed to funnel more than $15 million out of Loretto Hospital, the safety net facility on Chicago’s West Side.
In 2025, grand jurors also accused him of a COVID-19 testing scheme that defrauded the federal government out of hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s the case that was re-indicted Thursday.
Six others were charged along with Ahmed in the two cases. The feds’ investigation dates back to 2021, when Block Club Chicago reported the hospital had shared COVID-19 vaccines with employees at Trump Tower, where Ahmed had a condo. The vaccines were just becoming available and were still rare.
Ahmed’s prosecution was handled earlier by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg, the attorney at the center of the “Broadview Six” scandal. In that case, she allegedly spoke with grand jurors outside the grand jury room, excused members of the panel who disagreed with the feds’ case, and engaged in a forbidden practice known as “vouching.”
Vouching occurs when prosecutors put their personal credibility on the line to support criminal charges.
Similar claims have surfaced against Mecklenburg in the Ahmed prosecutions. No hearing has been held over what happened, though, a point of frustration in the legal community.
Coleman, the judge who will see Ahmed Monday, threatened in June to hold a hearing over the Mecklenburg allegations. That hearing likely would have seen Boutros summoned to the witness stand, in addition to Mecklenburg.
But Boutros’ office avoided the hearing by quickly — and permanently — dropping criminal charges against two of Ahmed’s co-defendants. The feds have since worked to strike deals with the remaining four.
Ahmed’s lawyers sought similar relief, but Coleman said he’d first have to be “arraigned, in-person, before this court.”
The news that he’d agreed to return to the United States came about two weeks later.
If Coleman agrees to a hearing, Boutros’ office could face a critical decision: Drop charges against a man accused of scheming hundreds of millions out of the federal government, or go forward with the hearing even after it permanently dropped charges in an apparent effort to avoid it.
The feds will likely argue any taint from Mecklenburg was cured when they secured a new indictment against Ahmed. But Coleman is clearly interested in getting to the bottom of what’s been going on in the U.S. attorney’s office.
She warned prosecutors in June that a hearing was “still a possibility.”
“I’m not saying that’s over with,” she said.