Three SC men indicted for ‘millions’ of thefts in flawed COVID testing scheme

A federal grand jury has indicted three South Carolina men, alleging they billed the government “millions” of dollars for worthless COVID tests during the height of the pandemic.

Hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 tests the company ran in their quest for illegal profits were “unreliable,” the eight-page, 16-count indictment said.

Kevin Murdock, 56; Thomas C. Lee, 56; and Vidhya Narayanan, 45, were charged with conspiracy to commit health care fraud and health care fraud. Murdock and Lee are from Greenville; Narayanan is from Atlanta.

They could be sentenced to prison for a maximum of 10 years and a $250,000 fine.

In all, more than 1 million people in the United States died from COVID, and more than 7 million world wide. The disease, which affects the respiratory and other systems, is spread through airborne droplets in breath and is highly contagious. It affects older people more severely than younger people. Vaccines offer substantial protection, and testing let people know if they had COVID and could infect other people.

The indictment in the current case alleged that Murdock, Lee and Narayanan that were officers in a medical laboratory services company that offered diagnostic testing services including COVID-19 testing. The company, Premier Medical Laboratory Services Co., was headquartered in Greenville and diagnosed tests from across South Carolina.

Murdock owned and operated Premier Medical Laboratory Services, and Lee and Narayanan were both high-level employees of Premier, the indictment said.

During the pandemic, which began sweeping the nation in early 2020, Premier — working as a subcontractor for another company — processed “hundreds of thousands” of COVID-19 tests and received government money from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the indictment said.

“Individuals sought testing for COVID-19 for a variety of reasons, including for diagnosis when suffering from COVID-19 symptoms, and in advance of engaging in certain activities, such as airplane travel and planned contact with others who, due to age or health conditions, were at higher risk of death or severe illness from COVID-19,” the indictment said.

Murdock, Lee and Narayanan devised “a multi-part scheme” whereby they “pooled” tests rather than running tests that would give results for individuals, the indictment said.

“In the pooling process, multiple samples are combined or pooled,” and that results in a combined test result, the indictment said.

“By pooling, a lab is able to process through more samples, and at a faster rate, than if the lab ran individual tests,” the indictment said.

The deception caused thousands of false claims to be submitted to the government, the indictment said.

The defendants’ company also manipulated software that rendered “test results for hundreds of thousands of individuals unreliable,” the indictment said.

Government programs making payouts for the worthless tests included Medicare, TRICARE and Medicaid, the indictment said.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Murdock agreed last year to pay a civil consent judgment of $27.5 million in connection with waste, fraud and abuse claims against him brought by the federal government and the states of South Carolina, Colorado and Georgia.

The scheme in that case involved medically unnecessary but expensive genetic testing reimbursed by the federal government, a Department of Justice press release said.

The case was investigated by the FBI Columbia Field Office and the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General. Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Watkins is prosecuting the case.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

This story was originally published March 11, 2026 at 1:23 PM.