Five years of extra training in chiropractic school to earn the title of Doctor of Chiropractic medicine, and Thomas Hobbs’ career accomplishments only achieved him the right to be called a coach. Coach of government fraud. Beginning in 2011, Thomas G. Hobbs, owner of a chiropractic clinic in Arnold, Missouri, was adjusting but it just wasn’t spines. It was disability applications. Hobbs assisted his patients in receiving 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 on how to lie to the Social Security Administration and insurers about their ability to perform basic daily tasks such as lifting, standing, walking, sitting, taking care of their personal needs and remembering. Remembering what? Their lies? To support these fraudulent claims, Hobbs submitted fraudulent medical reports. He also submitted fraudulent claims for reimbursement to health care benefit programs for services that were never provided. Because there is no billing code for coaching fraud.
During his whole scheme, Hobbs was using fictitious medical license number to buttress his medical determinations and further support patients’ disability claims. Hobbs frequently purchased and dispensed prescription medications intravenously to patients/fraudsters that he was strictly forbidden to do. Turns out the Missouri Board of Chiropractic Examiners had placed Hobbs on probation for five years for another billing scheme! They should have banned him from the field. On October 22, 2023, Hobbs was sentenced to four years in prison for health care fraud and ordered to pay full restitution of $16,426,773.
Today’s Fraud of The Day is based on article “Jefferson County chiropractor who faked medical license, led $4.3M fraud sentenced to prison” published by St. Louis Post Dispatch on September 22, 2023.
A Jefferson County chiropractor spent years pretending to be a licensed doctor to commit a $4.3 million fraud that involved fake medical excuse slips and false declarations of permanent disability.
Thomas Hobbs sat in a wheelchair and winced in pain from a recent hip surgery on Friday as he delivered an apology to his family and Judge Henry Autrey. “My intentions were always to take care of my patients and heal people,” he said. “There is no excuse for my actions.”
