$11 Million to a Pakistan "Telemarketing Company" for Medicare Data: Chicago-Area Lab Buyer Pleads Guilty in $227 Million COVID Test Kit Fraud

The government's announcement is attached: Justice Department release on the Kablazada plea.

Here is what happened

According to court documents and statements made in court, the scheme ran for about six months beginning in January 2023.

• Kablazada and his co-schemers acquired three Chicago-area laboratories: Chicago Care, V Care, and Al-Ameer.
• Kablazada paid about $11 million to a purported telemarketing company based in Pakistan to obtain personally identifiable information for hundreds of thousands of Medicare beneficiaries.
• Using that information, the laboratories submitted $227 million in false claims to Medicare for over-the-counter COVID-19 test kits that beneficiaries never requested and never received.
• Medicare paid about $136 million.
• The proceeds moved through overseas money transfers and unlicensed money transmitters, and were used in part to buy luxury vehicles.

What the indictment adds

The indictment in the Northern District of Illinois (Case No. 1:25-cr-00255) gives more detail. It identifies the Pakistan company only as "Marketing Company 1," described as "a purported telemarketing company based in Pakistan."

The grand jury alleged that:

1. The laboratories paid Marketing Company 1 in exchange for Medicare Beneficiary Identifiers for hundreds of thousands of Medicare beneficiaries, and then used those identifiers to bill Medicare.
2. Foreign nationals were installed as nominee owners of the labs, with the understanding that they would leave the United States once they learned the lab was under investigation.
3. Claims were submitted for beneficiaries who had died before the claimed date of service.
4. Medicare payments were moved quickly out of the laboratory bank accounts.

The indictment also includes charges for a co-defendant named Syed Mehdi Hussain. The release does not report any plea by Hussain. Charges are allegations; every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court.

Here is why it matters

The release does not allege that anyone made telemarketing calls to these beneficiaries. The connection is the data. A company presenting itself as a telemarketer was, according to the government, the source of identifiers for hundreds of thousands of Medicare patients. That data then turned into $227 million in claims.

For anyone in lead generation, that is the key point. Health care lead lists are valuable because they contain information that can be used to bill a federal program. In this case, the payments to the vendor appear in the indictment as a step in the scheme itself.

This is also a useful reminder of how Medicare data works. Beneficiary identifiers collected through marketing channels can end up far from the original consumer contact. Buyers and sellers of health care leads both carry risk when they cannot explain where the data came from and how it will be used.

Kablazada faces a maximum sentence of 20 years. A federal district court judge will set his sentence at a later date. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Chicago Field Office and the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG) investigated. The DOJ Fraud Division's Health Care Fraud Section is prosecuting, with help from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois.

What this means for you

1. Know your data source. If you buy health care leads, get written documentation of how each lead was collected and what the consumer agreed to.
2. Do not buy identifiers. A lead vendor offering Medicare Beneficiary Identifiers in bulk is a warning sign, not a feature.
3. Watch offshore vendors. Overseas telemarketing and data companies are hard to audit. Contract for audit rights and use them.
4. Match marketing to consent. Any outreach to Medicare beneficiaries should be tied to a documented request from that person.
5. Escalate anomalies. Claims for patients with no contact history, or for deceased patients, should stop the line.

The lesson from this case is simple. The marketing vendor can become part of the evidence. Choose vendors you would be confident explaining to a prosecutor.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Indian National Pleads Guilty to $227M Medicare Fraud (Oct. 30, 2026).