Chief Operating Officer of COVID Test Kit Company Embezzled Millions: Sentenced to a Second Term Behind Bars
Haggerty issued fraudulent payments from the Willowbrook, Ill.-based company where he worked to himself, said prosecutors in the case. These payments were ostensibly for goods and services provided by Haggerty and a COVID-19 test kit manufacturer.
But those goods and services never happened, making the payments fraudulent. Additionally, Haggerty committed these offenses while he was on pre-trial and pre-sentencing release for an earlier fraud case, according to the District Attorney.
Along with those fraudulent payments, Haggerty committed embezzlement by issuing checks drawn from the company’s bank account to himself.
Between 2021 and 2022, Haggerty embezzled or fraudulently misappropriated over $1.85 million from the company.
Haggerty’s Web of Lies
How did Haggerty have so much access to his employer’s finances?
It turns out he also lied to his company about his educational background and credentials, according to the indictment. He said he was a CPA but wasn’t.
Sentenced to Prison… While Already in Prison
Haggerty won’t start serving his 77-month sentence until he finishes his current sentence for another conviction for fraud committed during the early days of the pandemic.
Haggerty was sentenced in December 2022 to 57 months in prison for COVID-19 supplies fraud.
In the earlier case, Haggerty and two others formed a company called At Diagnostics Inc. in March 2020. That company sold personal protective equipment. At Diagnostics agreed to sell half a million N95 respirator masks to a hospital in Iowa for almost $2.5 million.
Haggerty created an invoice and instructed the hospital where to send the payment. But that account was controlled by Haggerty not by At Diagnostics, according to an earlier DOJ press release. Haggerty pocketed the money, using it to purchase multiple luxury cars, paying off $189,000 in credit card debt and withdrawing over $147,000 in cash.
And At Diagnostics never delivered the masks, because Haggerty claimed he never received money from the hospital. When confronted by his business partners about the money, he altered a bank statement to make it look like the hospital never sent the money.
This repeated once again with a hospital in Illinois, who agreed to pay about $4.5 million for one million N95 masks. However, this hospital requested to send the payment through an escrow account, and once At Diagnostics failed to bring masks, the escrow money was returned.
The hospital, however, later inadvertently wired more than $933,000 to Haggerty’s account in connection with a second order for 500,000 N95 masks that was never fulfilled. Haggerty spent some of this money for his personal use and did not return any of it.
Along with a prison sentence, Haggerty will have to pay $1.86 million in restitution.
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