The former leaders of Outcome Health — who were recently sentenced for fraud — have filed notices that they’re appealing their convictions.
Former Outcome CEO and co-founder Rishi Shah and former co-founder and President Shradha Agarwal filed their notices appeal on Monday and Friday, respectively. They are appealing their convictions to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
A jury convicted the pair of fraud in April 2023, along with a third former executive.
Shah was sentenced to 7½ years in prison on June 26 by U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin, who said during sentencing, “A lot of this I believe was driven by greed.” Agarwal was sentenced to three years of confinement at a halfway house.
Shah and Agarwal’s company was once one of the fastest-growing tech startups in Chicago. Outcome sold advertising to pharmaceutical companies, and ran those ads on TV screens and tablets that Outcome placed in doctors’ offices and waiting rooms. Government prosecutors, however, alleged that the trio lied about how many screens they had in doctors’ offices, overcharging pharmaceutical companies and using inflated revenue figures to raise money from investors and secure loans.
After the conviction, Shah and Agarwal’s attorneys argued in U.S. District Court that they were unable to hire their first choice of lawyers for the trial because too much of their money was frozen before the trial began.
Durkin, however, denied Shah and Agarwal’s motion for a new trial or dismissal of the indictment, writing that because Shah and Agarwal did not challenge the overly broad restraint of their assets before their trial, they could not do so later. He also wrote that even if fewer of their assets had been frozen before the trial, they still would not have had enough liquid assets to afford to hire their preferred attorneys.
“Mr. Shah’s appeal will focus on the Government’s admitted overrestraint of millions of dollars in unrelated property, which impaired Mr. Shah’s ability to retain his original counsel of choice, Bill Burck of Quinn Emanuel,” said Shah’s attorney Richard Finneran, in an emailed statement to the Tribune. “That is a serious violation of Mr. Shah’s constitutional rights, which we intend to vindicate in the Court of Appeals, and if necessary, the Supreme Court of the United States.”
Shah has also retained former acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal to help appeal his conviction.