CHICAGO — On Wednesday, a federal judge warned prosecutors that there was only one way for the U.S. attorney’s office to avoid an evidentiary hearing next week into alleged grand jury misconduct — and that they knew very well what it was. A day later, it was done. Late Thursday, prosecutors moved to permanently dismiss all charges against two defendants who were challenging their indictment in ...

Mahmood Sami Khan, who is charged as part of the Loretto Hospital fraud investigation, leaves Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, July 1, 2025.

Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune/TNS

CHICAGO — On Wednesday, a federal judge warned prosecutors that there was only one way for the U.S. attorney’s office to avoid an evidentiary hearing next week into alleged grand jury misconduct — and that they knew very well what it was.

A day later, it was done.

Late Thursday, prosecutors moved to permanently dismiss all charges against two defendants who were challenging their indictment in a massive, $800 million COVID-19 testing fraud scheme that was secured by the same federal prosecutor who handled the “Broadview Six” case.

It marked the most serious consequences yet in a growing controversy surrounding the collapse of the Broadview Six case, which has enveloped Chicago’s storied U.S. attorney’s office and led to calls for U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros to resign.

In their emergency motion to dismiss the fraud case against Mahmood Sami Khan and Suhaib Ahmad Chaudhry, prosecutors said they hoped to avoid a Friday deadline to provide extensive information to defense attorneys, which would have likely included sensitive intra-office emails and other communications about both the Broadview Six case and others.

The U.S. attorney’s office surely had another goal in mind as well: keeping Boutros and other members of his front office from having to testify under oath on June 17 about grand jury misconduct and alleged attempts to cover it up.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman must still grant the motion to dismiss, and even if she does, there are still legal avenues for her to insist on holding next week’s hearing. In court Wednesday, however, she was clear that she was giving prosecutors an out.

“There are a lot of people in your sphere that I am assuming are going to be asked to come testify,” Coleman told Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur, a veteran prosecutor who had nothing to do with the allegations of wrongdoing. “There’s one way to avoid that…and I think you know what that is.”

Coleman set an in-person hearing for 2 p.m. Friday to discuss the matter.

Even with a dismissal, two other defendants would still remain in the case: Anosh Ahmed, a former Loretto executive who’s currently in a Serbian jail fighting extradition; and Mohamed Sirajudeen, whose attorneys have not joined in the motion to dismiss.

Lawyers for Ahmed, who is jailed in Serbia and challenging extradition, had asked to join a push to dismiss the indictment based on alleged misconduct in the grand jury by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri 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.”

Coleman declined to grant Ahmed that status, however, saying the fact that he is overseas and not been arraigned on the case puts him on a “different track” than his co-defendants.

Ahmed is also charged in a separate case alleging he conspired with then-Loretto Hospital CEO George Miller and others to steal money from the West Side facility through a fraudulent billing scheme.

The developments come days after grand jury transcripts made public in the “Broadview Six” case revealed Mecklenburg had engaged in startlingly similar conduct in both investigations.

The transcripts released Tuesday revealed that after a grand jury had refused to indict six Operation Midway Blitz protesters on conspiracy charges, prosecutors returned a week later to try again, but ran into even more skepticism. One grand juror went so far as to call the case a “crock of (expletive),” while at least one other was dismissed by Mecklenburg after refusing to participate in a vote.

Mecklenburg also improperly “vouched” for the case, telling the grand jury repeatedly 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.

Mecklenburg, meanwhile, also presented evidence in the COVID-19 fraud case to the same grand jury panel, which returned an indictment in June 2025.

The indictment alleged Ahmed orchestrated a scheme to use laboratories — some of which were allegedly operated by Khan — in Illinois and Texas to submit nearly $900 million in false claims to the government from April 2021 to June 2022, prompting more than $293 million in fraudulent reimbursements.

Khan has denied any knowledge that the work he performed resulted in fraudulent billing and maintained that he did not stand to profit from the number of tests performed.

Chaudhry was accused of helping to launder the fraud proceeds through various bank accounts to conceal the origin of the funds – allegations that he has denied.

____