Hasan "Lucas" Seyhun billed the federal government for COVID tests on saliva samples that were never collected, antigen tests that were never observed by medical professionals, and PCR tests that were never run. In some cases, Fast Lab Technologies submitted claims to government healthcare programs before the test kits had even been delivered to customers.

Five hundred million dollars. That's the tab.

Seyhun, 45, the Chief Operating Officer of New York-based Fast Lab Technologies, LLC, pleaded guilty on September 24 in the Eastern District of Michigan to conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud. The charge carries the weight of a scheme that generated at least $35 million in illicit payments, with Seyhun personally pocketing $4,313,153 in proceeds — a figure now subject to a forfeiture money judgment.

He wasn't working alone. Fast Lab's CEO, Cemhan "Jimmy" Biricik, and its Medical Director, Dr. Martin Perlin, were previously charged in the scheme. The company's entire leadership structure was built around the grift: fake claims flowing to government-backed healthcare programs while Americans sat in their living rooms wondering if they could visit their dying relatives.

Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the National Fraud Enforcement Division — a unit the DOJ stood up on April 7 specifically to go after this kind of theft — didn't sugarcoat it. "At a time when Americans were scared for their families and their futures, Hasan Seyhun saw an opportunity to turn a national crisis into his own personal payday."

U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon Jr. was blunter: "Ripping off the American taxpayer is bad enough. Using the fear and isolation of the COVID pandemic to do it is sickening."

The investigation required a coalition that tells you something about the scale. FBI Detroit Field Office, IRS Criminal Investigation, Defense Criminal Investigative Service, HHS Office of Inspector General, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Department of Labor OIG, and Michigan's Attorney General Medicaid Fraud Control Unit all had a hand in building the case. FBI Special Agent in Charge Jennifer Runyan noted that "a scheme of this magnitude undermines public trust and diverts critical healthcare dollars."

Some will argue this is one bad company — an outlier, not a pattern. Except the DOJ created an entire new division to handle the volume of pandemic fraud cases. You don't build a National Fraud Enforcement Division because one lab in New York got creative with billing codes. You build it because the problem is systemic, because the emergency spending environment that Congress and the public health establishment created was a buffet line for anyone willing to file a fake claim.

That's the part nobody in Washington wants to sit with. The pandemic response wasn't just masks and lockdowns and "two weeks to slow the spread." It was the largest rapid deployment of federal dollars in modern history, distributed with minimal oversight because questioning the spending meant you didn't "trust the science." Fast Lab trusted the science just fine — the science of submitting claims before the test kits arrived.

Seyhun ran his operation out of Miami while the company was headquartered in New York. The tests were billed in Michigan. The money came from everywhere.