Jefferson County Chiropractor Sentenced

(St. Louis, MO) Officials with the U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Missouri in St Louis announce the sentencing of Jefferson County Chiropractor 61 year old Vivian Carbone Hobbs, of Fenton. Carbone Hobbs is sentenced to four years in prison and she's ordered to repay $16.4 million lost to disability fraud. Carbone Hobbs was convicted by a jury in U.S. District Court in St. Louis in February of conspiracy to defraud the Social Security Administration, 10 counts of health care fraud, and two counts of theft of money from the United States. 
Carbone-Hobbs and her 65 year old husband, Thomas G. Hobbs, are co-owners of Power-Med Inc., a chiropractic clinic in Arnold, Missouri. The couple, some of their employees and others conspired with each other and others to fraudulently obtain disability payments for patients. In exchange for upfront fees of thousands of dollars, Carbone-Hobbs, Hobbs and others would coach patients on how to pretend to be unable to work and unable to lift objects, sit, stand and walk. Patients had to pay hundreds of dollars for annual appointments to keep qualifying for disability payments. Carbone-Hobbs was also billing insurance companies for services that were not provided.
Hobbs pled guilty in January to a conspiracy charge and admitted conspiring to commit the crimes of health care fraud, making false statements, theft of government funds, and Social Security fraud. He was sentenced in September to four years in prison and ordered to repay $4.3 million.