Chicago, June 29 (Representative) Former Outcome Health CEO Rishi Shah has been sentenced to 7.5 years in prison for orchestrating a billion-dollar fraud scheme that funded the Indian-American’s lavish lifestyle with private aircraft and yachts, media reports said. US District Judge Thomas Durkin sentenced Shah and his co-defendants, former Outcome President Shradha Agarwal and former Chief Operating Officer Brad Purdy, after a hearing, India West Journal reported. Following his sentencing, authorities planned to seize Shah’s $8 million mansion on the North Side of Chicago. ‘38-year-old Shah, son of a doctor, dropped out of Northwestern University to start Outcome Health, estimated to be worth several billion dollars by Forbes, but his fortune was found to be based on lies and corruption,’ the report said. Outcome Health installed television screens and tablets in doctors’ offices nationwide and sold advertising space on these devices to clients, primarily pharmaceutical companies. ‘Evidence presented at trial revealed that Shah, Agarwal, and Purdy sold advertising inventory the company did not have and then under-delivered on its advertising campaigns.
Despite the under-deliveries, the company invoiced its clients as if it had delivered in full, the India West Journal report said. According to the media reports, they lied or caused others to lie to conceal the under-deliveries from clients, creating the illusion that the company was meeting its contractual obligations. Purdy and others at Outcome also inflated metrics to show increased patient engagement with Outcome’s tablets. The Department of Justice reports that a scheme from 2011 to 2017 led to at least $45 million in overbilled advertising services, it added. Three individuals were convicted of defrauding Outcome’s lenders and investors, resulting in a significant overstatement of the company’s revenue in 2015 and 2016, India West Journal stated. Shah was convicted on June 26 of mail fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering, while Agarwal was awaiting sentencing for mail fraud, wire fraud, and bank fraud. Both were sentenced to multiple years in prison, it further added. Three former Outcome employees, Ashik Desai, Kathryn Choi, and Oliver Han, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud before the trial, along with three other former employees.