An Arnold chiropractor has pleaded guilty to fraudulently receiving more then $3.5 million in payments from the Social Security Administration and private disability benefit insurers by falsely claiming to have a medical license and exaggerating patients’ conditions, the U.S. Attorney’s Office reported.
Thomas G. Hobbs, 65, pleaded guilty on Jan. 19 to a conspiracy charge, admitting to committing health care fraud and Social Security fraud and making false statements and stealing government funds. Hobbs is scheduled to be sentenced on April 19 in front of Judge Henry E. Autrey in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, the report said.
The conspiracy charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, but prosecutors and Hobbs’ defense lawyer have recommended a four-year prison term and an order that he repay the stolen money, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Assistant U.S. attorneys Tracy Berry, Dorothy McMurtry, Diane Klocke and Gwendolyn Carroll prosecuted the case.
Hobbs and his wife and fellow chiropractor, Vivian Carbone-Hobbs, are co-owners of Power-Med Inc. in Arnold. They, along with two of their employees, a former AB InBev union representative and five patients, were indicted by a federal grand jury on Sept. 17, 2020, for various felony charges including conspiracy to defraud, health care fraud and theft of government funds, court records show.
The others who were indicted include Power Med employees Christina Barrera and Clarissa Pogue, former AB InBev union representative James Ralston and patients Elizabeth Guetersloh, Glenda Johnson, Sheila Huffman, Shannon Nenninger and Gary Walesky, according to the report.
Nenninger pleaded guilty in October 2022, and in January 2022, she was sentenced to a year and one day in prison and ordered to repay more than $466,000, court records show.
Ralston, Johnson, Huffman and Walesky also have pleaded guilty in the case. Ralston and Johnson are scheduled to be sentenced this month, and Huffman and Walesky are scheduled to be sentenced in February, according to court documents.
Despite lacking a medical license, Hobbs purchased and dispensed prescription medications, administered injections and dispensed medications intravenously to patients between 2011 and 2019. He admitted in his plea agreement that he knew he was not permitted to administer injections because the Missouri Board of Chiropractic Examiners placed him on probation for five years for fraudulently billing insurance companies for unlawfully administering injections.
Beginning in 2011, Hobbs also fraudulently helped patients receive disability benefit payments through the Social Security Administration’s Disability Trust Fund and through private disability benefit insurance providers. Hobbs charged patients between $2,000 and $8,600 to prepare disability forms and coach them to lie to the Social Security Administration and insurers about their alleged inability to perform basic activitiesm like lifting, standing, walking, sitting, remembering and taking care of their personal needs, the plea said.
Hobbs also used a fictitious medical license number to bolster patients’ disability claims so his medical determinations would be given greater weight than those from medical experts who evaluated claims on behalf of the Social Security Administration and private disability benefit insurers. He also submitted false and fraudulent medical reports to give the appearance that he had a long history with the patients, according to the plea.
Hobbs submitted or caused to be submitted false and fraudulent claims for reimbursement to health care benefit programs for services that were not provided, medically unnecessary services or services provided by unqualified persons to make it appear the disability patients had medical conditions. Those procedures included MRIs, CT scans and cardiovascular studies. He also submitted numerous claims for office visits when he had not provided the required face-to-face evaluation and management, the report said.
The Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General and the FBI investigated the case.
Anyone who suspects fraud involving the Disability Insurance Benefit Program is asked to contact the Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General Hotline at 1-800-269-0271 or file a report through the website oig.ssa.gov/report.