A suburban Chicago businessman has been charged with fraud for allegedly swindling more than $2.6 million from hospitals who paid for scarce personal protective equipment amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. A criminal complaint filed in US District Court in Chicago charges Dennis W. Haggerty, Jr., the president of Illinois-based At Diagnostics Inc., with one count of wire fraud. Haggerty, 44, of Burr Ridge, Ill., was arrested this morning. According to the complaint, Haggerty and two business partners formed At Diagnostics in March 2020 to sell personal protective equipment. Two large university hospitals — one in Chicago and the other in Iowa City, Iowa — ordered a combined one million N95 face masks from the company. As a deposit on the masks, the hospitals paid more than $3 million into a bank account that Haggerty falsely represented as an At Diagnostics account, but which was actually solely controlled by Haggerty, the complaint states. The complaint alleges that Haggerty spent part of the hospitals’ funds for his own personal benefit, including purchasing two Maserati automobiles and a Land Rover sport-utility vehicle. When At Diagnostics failed to deliver the masks on time, Haggerty allegedly falsely claimed to one hospital that his bank had no record of the payment being received.
