Three men in Chicago-area chiropractic group sentenced in $10.8 million insurance scam
Apr 26, 2017, 6:13pm CDT
A Chicago-area chiropractor was sentenced, alongside his brother and father, to a federal prison term in connection to a billing scheme that cheated insurance carriers out of $10.8 million.
Vladimir Gordin Jr., 46, ran a chiropractic clinic in Wheeling with his father, Vladimir Gordin Sr., 70, and brother Alexsander Gordin, 34. The three men pled guilty earlier this year to healthcare fraud.
Gordin Jr. was sentenced in the federal court in Chicago to seven years; Gordin Sr. was sentenced to two and a half years; and Alexsander Gordin was sentenced to two years.
The men used the company to falsely bill the carriers for medical services that were either not provided or not medically necessary. They tried to cover the crime by fabricating patients’ medical records, according to the United States Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of Illinois.
In a few instances, the patients knew of the overbilling, but were incentivized to go along with the scheme by having their deductibles met at no cost to them, according to the government. Other patients shared in a portion of the overbilling proceeds.
The Gordin Medical Center, in addition to an ultrasound service that was part of the scheme, submitted false bills totaling $28.7 million from 2006 to November 2012, causing a loss to five insurance carriers of $10.8 million, the government said. The loss includes medical claims administered on behalf of several union health and welfare funds in the Chicago area.
“As a result of the scheme, the Gordins created a medical center whose focus, for both the chiropractors and the employees, was not patient care,” assistant U.S. attorneys Heather McShain and Sarah Streicker stated in the government’s sentencing memorandum. “GMC was a front for false billing; patient care was an afterthought.”