A former vice president of Outcome Health pleaded guilty Monday to his role in an alleged $1 billion fraud scheme at the health care information and advertising company.
Ashik Desai, 26, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in a U.S. district courtroom, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Federal prosecutors filed charges last month against him and other Outcome executives, including CEO Rishi Shah.
In pleading guilty Monday, Desai agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and put off his own sentencing until the case against the Outcome Health executives is complete. If he cooperates as expected, prosecutors would recommend he serve no more than 10 years in prison.
Prosecutors have said that Outcome placed TV screens, tablets and other displays full of educational content in doctors’ offices and sold advertising space to pharmaceutical companies. Desai joined Outcome, also known as ContextMedia, on a full-time basis in July 2013.
Desai and other executives allegedly lied to Outcome’s clients about the network of offices it could target for advertising and about how many screens the ads would appear on, and then it inflated the numbers indicating how often patients would engage with the screens, prosecutors said.
