Chiropractic

May 1, 2017

Kansas City area chiropractor Brian Schnitta and his clinic, Natural Way Chiropractic Center, agreed to pay roughly $1 million to settle allegations they violated the False Claims Act by charging Medicare for treatments for peripheral neuropathy not medically necessary or not otherwise covered by the program. DOJ (DKS)

May 20, 2016

New Jersey announced that a chiropractor from Morris County pleaded guilty to taking more than $250,000 in illegal kickbacks from doctors and other individuals in return for referring patients to their practices, clinics and medical imaging centers. Dr. Alexander Dimeo, 61, of Budd Lake, N.J., and Fort Myers, Fla., pleaded guilty to two separate accusations before Superior Court Judge Michael A. Toto in Middlesex County. Dimeo retired last year, but he formerly operated Passaic Chiropractic & Therapy Center PC in Passaic. In pleading guilty, Dimeo admitted that between 2009 and 2015, he received approximately $254,500 in illegal kickbacks for patient referrals. NJ

April 15, 2016

A former North Jersey chiropractor who was stripped of his license to practice more than a decade ago, has been charged with masterminding a medical fraud ring that allegedly bilked nearly $4 million from numerous insurance carriers. In an indictment handed up in Morris County Superior Court, Philip Potacco was charged with conspiracy, money laundering, and a host of other crimes in connection with the scheme he allegedly ran from his South Orange Medical Facility Consulting Group LLC (“SOTC”), 2010 to 2015. Potacco, whose chiropractic license was revoked in 2002, allegedly hired a licensed chiropractor to act as a straw owner of SOTC while he ran it covertly. Potacco allegedly used illegal “runners” to recruit accident patients to the facility, including people who had staged their crashes. Potacco then fraudulently submitted insurance claims for those patients, using the billing information of the licensed chiropractor he had hired, prosecutors said. Some of those claims were for services that were never rendered, according to prosecutors. NJ

September 24, 2015

Elizabeth Kressin agreed to pay $62,349 to resolve allegations she violated the False Claims Act by improperly billing the Medicaid system for medically unnecessary chiropractic procedures and for the treatment of conditions for which payment is not allowed, including bed wetting, colic and ear infections.  DOJ (Iowa)

February 26, 2015

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General announced the arrest of Dr. Daniel Ronchetta, Chiropractic Physician Assistant John Crowe and patient recruiter Frank Barrios for allegedly defrauding Medicaid and Medicare by paying and receiving kickbacks in return for providing false home health prescriptions and plans of care to patient recruiters. FL