Fast Lab COO Pleads Guilty in COVID Test Scheme That Billed Insurers Over $500 Million

A Miami man who ran the day-to-day operations of a COVID-19 testing company has admitted to helping run one of the largest pandemic-era healthcare fraud schemes prosecutors have charged to date.

Hasan "Lucas" Seyhun, 45, pleaded guilty September 23 to conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan. Seyhun was chief operating officer of Fast Lab Technologies LLC, a New York-based company that marketed COVID-19 tests as "no cost" and let customers order them online.

According to the Department of Justice, Fast Lab took the insurance information customers handed over to get their free tests and used it to bill government-backed healthcare programs for services that never happened. The false claims asserted that medical professionals observed antigen tests, that medical personnel collected saliva samples, and that PCR testing was performed on those samples, none of which prosecutors say actually occurred.

U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon Jr. said the operation was brazen enough to bill before it even shipped the product. "Not only did Seyhun and his co-conspirators defraud the American public of hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of fake services, but they were so confident in their scheme that they routinely submitted claims for payment before test kits were even delivered to the customer," Gorgon said in the DOJ's release.

The Numbers, Precisely

The headline figure prosecutors are using, more than $500 million, refers to the total value of fraudulent claims Fast Lab submitted to government-backed health programs. That is not the same as what the scheme actually collected. The DOJ says the fraud resulted in at least $35 million in illicit payments actually received. Seyhun personally has agreed to a $4.31 million forfeiture money judgment, representing what prosecutors say he took for himself.

Billing half a billion dollars in fake claims is a serious crime regardless of collection rate, but conflating claims submitted with money stolen overstates what any single defendant personally profited from.

Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the DOJ's National Fraud Enforcement Division did not mince words about intent. "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," McDonald said. "Instead of providing the American people with the assistance they needed during a critical time, Seyhun and his colleagues exploited their trust, and lined their pockets from fraudulent insurance claims." McDonald added that the Fraud Division "will not let up in its relentless pursuit of COVID era fraudsters."

Co-Conspirators Already Charged

Seyhun's guilty plea follows charges filed roughly 14 months earlier against Fast Lab's CEO, Cemhan "Jimmy" Biricik of Boca Raton, Florida, and the company's medical director, Dr. Martin Perlin, according to the Floridian Press. Those two were charged over the same alleged scheme. No trial outcome for Biricik or Perlin has been reported in these sources, so their cases remain pending.

The investigation pulled in multiple federal agencies, including the FBI and the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, according to American Bazaar Online.

A System That Made This Possible

How did a scheme billing more than $500 million in fake tests run long enough to reach that scale before anyone caught it? Pandemic-era rules pushed insurers and government programs to reimburse COVID testing claims quickly, with limited upfront verification, to get tests to people fast. That urgency is defensible on its own terms. But it also created an environment where a company could bill for services it never performed and get paid before regulators or insurers checked the underlying facts. Critics across the political spectrum have pointed to exactly this kind of gap as the natural cost of rushing emergency healthcare programs into place without building in verification first. That's a system-design critique, not an excuse for what Seyhun admitted to doing.

The case lands in the middle of a broader federal push. The Daily Caller reported that the Trump administration announced Thursday it uncovered more than $1.2 billion in suspected fraud across five COVID-related contracts. The Floridian Press separately reported that Vice President JD Vance said the administration is halting Obamacare enrollment for roughly 760,000 individuals the administration believes enrolled fraudulently, a separate action unconnected to the Fast Lab case in the reporting available.

Seyhun's sentencing date has not been reported in available court filings. Whether Biricik and Perlin will also plead guilty or proceed to trial remains an open question.