A former Chicago medical supply company owner who fled to Dubai shortly before being indicted in a massive scheme to defraud Loretto Hospital has returned to the U.S. to face the charges.
Sameer Suhail, 48, was taken into custody at O’Hare International Airport at about 4 p.m. Tuesday and spent the night at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in the Loop before appearing for a bond hearing Wednesday afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Beth Jantz.
As part of a prearranged agreement with prosecutors, Suhail was released on home confinement and a $5 million bond secured by four properties. Jantz also ordered him to stay away from his co-defendants and any current or former employees of Loretto.
Dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit with his salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a bun, Suhail smiled at his son and daughter in the gallery after being led into the courtroom. He addressed the court only briefly to say he understood the conditions of his bond and the possible penalties if he is convicted.
His lawyer, Adam Sheppard, said after the hearing that he was “glad to have obtained pretrial release” for Suhail but declined to comment further on the charges.
Suhail was indicted in 2024 on charges he served as a front for millions of dollars in bogus payments by Loretto for invoices that were never fulfilled. Also charged were former Loretto Hospital CEO George Miller, Chief Financial Officer Anosh Ahmed, and Heather Bergdahl, another onetime executive with the small, safety-net facility on Chicago’s West Side.
Suhail faces 15 counts in all, including wire fraud, embezzlement, conspiracy to solicit kickbacks and money laundering. The most serious counts carry up to 20 years in prison.
Sheppard entered a plea of not guilty on his client’s behalf.
Prosecutors said both Ahmed and Suhail fled to Dubai shortly before the charges came down. Ahmed was arrested last year after traveling to Serbia and is currently in jail there fighting extradition proceedings, court records show.
Bergdahl, meanwhile, was arrested in May 2024 after boarding a private jet in Houston that was chartered to take her to Dubai. The flight had been arranged by Ahmed, though Bergdahl’s attorney argued it was a preplanned vacation and not an attempt to flee. She was later released on bond secured by her parents’ home.
Before he left the country, Suhail was CEO of Foresight Hospital and Health Systems, which was headquartered on East Wacker Drive, records show. In an online bio, Suhail described himself as “an entrepreneur, health care investor, and philanthropist” whose “personal mission is to provide quality health care for local communities, particularly those in underserved urban and rural communities.”
While in Dubai, Suhail “expanded into aesthetic medicine” and founded a plastic surgery center, according to a website for the company, American Accelerated Aesthetics Plastic Surgery LLC, and other Suhail-related ventures.
The site includes a quote from Suhail: “Good healthcare is measured in lives improved, not procedures performed.”
The indictment alleged the defendants embezzled at least $15 million from Loretto over a five-year period, including at the height of the COVID-19 crisis, by causing payments to vendor companies for purported goods and services that they knew had not been provided.
Many of the phony vendor companies were created by Suhail and Ahmed under various names to conceal their association with the fraudulent payments, which were sent to bank accounts the defendants controlled, the indictment stated.
The federal investigation began after Loretto’s vaccination program came under fire for administering hundreds of COVID shots at a suburban church connected to Miller at a time where vaccination doses were still scarce.
Around the same time, Loretto’s board reprimanded Miller and Ahmed after the hospital improperly vaccinated ineligible workers at Trump Tower downtown and Cook County judges.
Miller was suspended and later left the hospital amid the fallout in April 2022.
Bergdahl and Miller are scheduled to plead guilty to their roles in the fraud scheme next week, court records show.
Ahmed is also facing charges in a separate case alleging a massive $290 million fraud scheme that allegedly used stolen patient data to bill nearly a billion dollars worth of bogus COVID-19 tests for purportedly uninsured patients at the height of the pandemic.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
