The former CEO of Loretto Hospital has been charged in an embezzlement scheme that allegedly bilked millions of dollars from the small West Side safety-net hospital, even as the COVID-19 pandemic was raging.
George Miller, 73, was charged in a superseding indictment made public Friday with a single count of bribery conspiracy. An arraignment date has not been set.
The indictment lays out Miller’s alleged involvement in the $15 million embezzlement scheme in which four others have already been charged, including the hospital’s former Chief Financial Officer Anosh Ahmed. Ahmed was charged earlier this summer with embezzling at least $15 million from Loretto.
The new indictment, filed Wednesday in federal court in Chicago, lays out details of Miller’s alleged involvement in the scheme between 2018 and 2021.
Miller, who was CEO at Loretto from 2017 until he left amid turmoil in 2022, allegedly conspired to use his position to steer hospital contracts to medical supplies and service companies owned and operated by Chicagoan Sameer Suhail, who has already been indicted in the alleged scheme.
Miller is accused, along with his former CFO, of conspiring to accept checks and money transfers from Suhail in exchange for the award of contracts and other hospital business to Suhail’s companies. He allegedly accepted around $769,000 in bribes, prosecutors said.
Miller’s attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.
Already charged in the alleged scheme are Ahmed, his friend, Heather Bergdahl, whom he hired to be the hospital’s chief transformation officer, and Suhail, a doctor and medical supply company owner accused of serving as a front for millions of dollars in bogus payments by Loretto for invoices that were never fulfilled.
In April 2021, according to the indictment, a hospital employee wrote to Miller to notify him that auditors were asking for verification that the hospital had received goods in the amount reflected on invoices from one of Suhail’s medical supplies companies.
“We have the inventory, I will sign that documents that we have that amount of inventory,” Miller allegedly wrote.
The indictments follow a federal investigation initiated after Loretto came under fire for improperly doling out COVID-19 vaccinations soon after the shots became available. In 2021, following reporting by Block Club Chicago and WBEZ, Loretto admitted it had improperly vaccinated workers at Trump Tower in downtown Chicago and had also improperly given shots to Cook County judges at a time when the vaccines were still scarce.
Miller, who was CEO of Loretto during that period, was first suspended and later left the hospital amid the fallout in 2022.
Ahmed fled to Dubai earlier this year, according to two sources familiar with the case. Bergdahl, who was arrested after boarding a private jet in Houston that was chartered to take her to Dubai, has pleaded not guilty to all counts against her, according to court records.
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