In cases of fraud there can be instances of a group of individuals working together to conceal embezzlement.
Such is the case for Mr. George Miller Jr., former CEO of a Chicago hospital, who is alleged to have conspired with the CFO at the time, Mr. Anosh Ahmed. Together, Mr. Miller and Mr. Ahmed corruptly provided vendor contracts to certain medical supply companies in exchange for cash kickbacks from the medical supply companies’ owner.
The charges also alleged the two men issued false payments to vendor companies for goods and services not actually provided. Many of these companies were created under various names to conceal the two men’s association with the fraudulent payments. To further conceal the fraud there were allegedly bank accounts in the names of two legitimate hospital vendors and fraudulent payments were deposited into those accounts.
Additional charges were also filed alleging from 2018 to 2021, the hospital’s owner, Mr. Sammer Suhail, paid Mr. Miller and Mr. Ahmed a share of $19 million in payments he received from the hospital, in return for Mr. Miller and Mr. Ahmed recruiting contracts and business for him. The payments were in addition to the millions of dollars in fraudulent payments already alleged.
In conclusion, not every case of fraud is a simple case of employee theft of an individual taking monies of property for which they are not entitled. In this case, there were multiple individuals on different levels of the company hierarchy working together. Theft can be harder to discover when individuals have higher positions in a company, but this factor still needs to be considered when creating methods to mitigate losses through theft.
Former chief executive officer of Chicago Hospital added to federal. (2024, October 11). https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/pr/former-chief-executive-officer-chicago-hospital-added-federal-indictment-alleging
Photo by Marta Branco
