Vivian Carbone-Hobbs, an Arnold chiropractor, has been sentenced to four years in prison for disability and health care fraud. She also has been ordered to repay $16,425,773.34, the U.S. District Attorney’s Office announced.
Carbone-Hobbs and her husband, Thomas G. Hobbs, owned Power-Med Inc., in Arnold.
Carbone-Hobbs, 61, of Fenton was sentenced on Thursday, Oct. 19. A jury found her guilty on Feb. 8 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri of conspiracy to defraud the Social Security Administration, 10 counts of health care fraud and two counts of theft of money from the U.S., court records show.
Thomas Hobbs, 66, of Fenton 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. He was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to repay $3,412,659.80, court records show.
A jury also found Power-Med employees Clarissa Pogue, 39, of De Soto and Christina Barrera, 63, of St. Louis guilty on Feb. 8 of conspiring to commit disability fraud after a seven-day jury trial, according to court documents.
Pogue was placed on five years’ probation on Aug. 17, and Barrera is appealing a 14-month prison sentence and an order to repay $543,315.42, court records show.
Others indicted in the scheme include former AB InBev union representative James Ralston and patients Elizabeth Guetersloh, Glenda Johnson, Sheila Huffman, Shannon Nenninger and Gary Walesky, the report said.
Ralston pleaded guilty, and on March 5, he was placed on five years’ probation and ordered to repay $2,250,496.46, according to court records.
Guetersloh is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 30 after a jury found her guilty of two counts of mail fraud, 16 counts of wire fraud and eight counts of theft of government funds, court records show.
Johnson, Huffman and Walesky were each placed on five years’ probation and ordered to pay restitution after each pleaded guilty. Johnson was ordered to repay $362,527.68, Huffman must repay $100,887.20 and Walesky was ordered to repay $324,776.56, court documents said.
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 said.
In exchange for upfront fees of thousands of dollars, Carbone-Hobbs, Hobbs and others would coach patients on how to pretend to be disabled. Patients had to pay hundreds of dollars for annual appointments to keep qualifying for disability payments, the U.S. District Attorney’s Office reported.
Carbone-Hobbs also was billing insurance companies for services that were not provided, according to the U.S. District Attorney’s Office.
Hobbs admitted that starting in 2011, he helped patients fraudulently receive disability benefit payments through the Social Security Administration’s Disability Trust Fund and through private disability benefit insurance providers. He charged patients between $2,000 and $8,600 to prepare disability forms, according to his plea agreement.
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.
Assistant U.S. attorneys Tracy Berry, Dorothy McMurtry, Diane Klocke and Gwendolyn Carroll are prosecuting the cases.
The Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General and the FBI investigated the cases.
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.