Federal prosecutors told a judge they will present evidence to a new grand jury regarding fraud allegations at a West Side hospital after a former lead prosecutor landed at the center of a “credibility crisis” for her conduct on the “Broadview Six” case.
Since the case’s last status hearing in late May, Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur told U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman that “potential issues with the grand jury presentation” had arisen and that the government would be seeking to reindict former Loretto Hospital CEO George Miller, Chief Financial Officer Anosh Ahmed, medical supply executive Sameer Suhail and Heather Bergdahl.
The group is accused of embezzling at least $15 million from the safety net hospital 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.
MacArthur didn’t explicitly mention the “Broadview Six” case or the alleged misconduct by Sheri Mecklenburg, the prosecutor who worked on both cases, but the government’s move to seek a new indictment is the latest ripple in the bombshell case’s wake.
According to transcripts made public in June, Mecklenburg — who took another job with U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin but was later terminated — improperly “vouched” for the case against a group of Democratic political operatives and one garden store worker who were protesting at the west suburban Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center at the height of Operation Midway Blitz.
Among other alleged gaffes, Mecklenburg reportedly told skeptical grand jurors she would “never” ask them to charge anyone if she didn’t think there was probable cause. She also had improper contact with two grand jurors outside the official proceedings that she later had to put on the record as a “mea culpa,” the transcripts showed.
It took two tries and a personal appearance by U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros to secure an indictment against the group. Boutros’ office dismissed the case May 21, days before it was set to go to trial. Boutros, who has since announced his office will review the cases Mecklenburg handled going back 20 years, has turned over transcripts and audio recordings of her grand jury sessions in at least a half dozen cases, and outright dismissed charges against some 10 defendants — with more potentially to come.
Ahmed, Loretto’s ex-CFO, is also charged in a separate fraud case involving Loretto Hospital and is challenging his extradition from jail in Serbia. His lawyers last month asked to join a push to dismiss the indictment based on alleged misconduct in the grand jury by Mecklenburg, including vouching, disclosure of off-the-record negotiations with a defense attorney and “inflammatory characterizations of the defendants, including name-calling and folk-wisdom metaphors.”
U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman had ordered an evidentiary hearing into those allegations, but it was called off after Boutros’ office dismissed all charges against two of the defendants.
