A Crystal Lake medical office is full of unopened mail, but no employees. What is going on?

Katie Duda noticed an unusual $500 lab test from a provider she said she never heard of on an Explanation of Benefits letter she recently received from her insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas.

“Had I been frequently to the doctor getting labs, I probably wouldn’t have even given it a second thought,” said Duda.

So, she and her mother traced the lab, Niyraa LLC, to a strip center in Crystal Lake and found an office with a sign on the door saying to drop off mail inside. The door was unlocked. No employees were anywhere in sight.

“It looked vacant,” Duda said.

Thinking that was strange, they reached out to CBS News Chicago to take a closer look.

Five times over several months, CBS News Chicago reporter Marissa Sulek and photographers visited Niyraa LLC. They found thousands of pieces of mail, mostly from various Blue Cross Blue Shield entities, addressed to Niyraa LLC sitting in U.S. Postal Service bins on the front desk.

We contacted Crystal Lake police, the FBI and U.S. Postal Service Inspectors to tell them all of that mail was there and people’s personal information could be at risk. 

But every time we went back, the thousands of envelopes were still there. The only thing that changed was that they moved from the front desk to the back, now stuffed in a growing pile of black and white garbage bags.

So, who’s behind this medical office and what’s going on with all of the mysterious mail?

“Mohammed I Quadri” is the name plastered all over the lab’s signage outside, inside and on current lab certifications framed and hanging on the wall.

Brittany Serby, who owns the Functional Wellness Clinic a couple of storefronts down, said she’s never seen Quadri and is concerned about what might be going on with all of the mail inside the unusual office.

“It was real troubling to learn,” she said.

CBS News Chicago contacted the mall owner, who said he hasn’t seen Quadri in months, but Quadri still pays the rent.

We also tried several ways to contact the mystery man. We emailed, texted, made phone calls and went to addresses we found that might be connected to him. No luck. 

We even waited outside the Crystal Lake lab office one weekday for hours, during a time when it should have been officially open for business. He never showed.

We couldn’t find Quadri, but what could really be going on inside this mysterious office with no employees ever around?

For insight into a possible answer, we enlisted the help of a certified fraud examiner and forensic accountant, James Scordo.

We brought him to the office, which was once again unlocked and wide open.

Scordo saw the pristine, clean lab equipment, the same unopened packages of vials and other supplies that had been there for months and the mountains of mail, some envelopes now spilled out onto the floor.

His reaction?

“Oh my God,” he said.

His first impression?

“Each one of those could be a potential victim,” he said. 

Not only could their personal private information be compromised, but Scordo said if the lab tests were never conducted, it could impact each one’s medical record and ability to get insurance in the future.

What does he think is going on with all of this mystery mail?

“It appears this is a front for a fraud scheme. I mean, it has all the signs,” he said.

Scordo said he believes it could be phantom billing, in which Blue Cross Blue Shield is paying Quadri for services patients aren’t receiving. The patients don’t even realize their insurer is being billed wrongly for those services.

Serby said she’s concerned that no one seems to be doing anything about this wide open office with the mountains of mail.

“It doesn’t feel like anything is being done to stop whatever is happening,” she said. 

We did finally learn that the Postal Service Inspector General is investigating, but apparently had not taken steps to protect the mail for many months, because the mail was always there every time we went back to check.

The FBI also told us they alerted local law enforcement and sanitary crews to make sure those entities knew about the mail in case someone threw it away.

In the past couple of weeks, we received photos from neighboring business owners showing the garbage bags stuffed with mail had been removed, by whom we don’t know. However, more mail had been dropped off and was sitting on the front desk.

As recently as Sept. 16, no mail could be seen from the outside, but the door was still unlocked and the sign inviting people inside to drop off mail was still taped to the door.

We also contacted Blue Cross Blue Shield who said they can’t comment on any provider relationships.