Ohio chiropractor sentenced for insurance fraud

The doctor will go to jail after submitting insurance claims for services he never provided to patients and double billing private carriers

Insurance News

By Lyle Adriano

Ohio Lieutenant Governor and Ohio Department of Insurance director Mary Taylor announced Feb. 8 that Jeffrey R. Shope—a Blacklick, Ohio-based chiropractor—was sentenced to one year and one day in prison for one count of insurance fraud.

Shope, owner of True Health Chiropractic in Westerville, was sentenced in United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. He pleaded guilty on Sept. 29.

“We are keeping close watch over the Ohio insurance marketplace as part of our aggressive efforts to protect consumers from insurance fraud,” Taylor said in a statement. “I thank our partner agencies for working with us to ensure that justice was served.”

A joint investigation between the Ohio Department of Insurance, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation uncovered that Shope engaged in unlawful billing practices from Jan. 2009 to Dec. 2012. Through his scheme, he illegally obtained almost $700,000 in fraudulent payments from federal health care benefits programs, the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation, and private insurance companies.

Shope filed insurance claims for services he never provided to patients and billed both private insurers and government programs twice for the same dates of service.
 

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