Minnesota chiropractor and two co-defendants have been convicted by a federal jury for their roles in an insurance fraud conspiracy, state Commerce Commissioner Mike Rothman announced.
Chiropractor Preston Ellard Forthun, 39, of Bloomington, was convicted on charges of conspiracy, mail fraud and wire fraud. Co-defendants Abdisalan Abdulahab Hussein, 48, and Carlos Patricio Luna, 49, both of Minneapolis, were also convicted for their roles in the scheme.
The jury returned guilty verdicts on all counts against the three defendants following a 10-day trial before U.S. District Judge Michael J. Davis,
Forthun was a licensed Doctor of Chiropractic. Beginning in at least 2010, he devised a scheme to defraud auto insurance companies by hiring patient recruiters, known as “runners,” to solicit auto accident victims to attend treatments at his clinic, Comprehensive Rehabilitation Centers of MN (Comprehensive Rehab).
According to Rothman’s announcement, Forthun and his co-defendant Darryl Humenny, who was also a Doctor of Chiropractic with Comprehensive Rehab and who previously pleaded guilty, paid the runners, including Hussein and Luna, between $1,000 and $1,500 for each patient they brought to Comprehensive Rehab so the two chiropractors could bill services to the insurance companies.
To disguise the payments, Forthun typically paid the runners in cash or wrote checks made out to “cash,” along with a bogus description in the memo line indicating that the payment was for “marketing,” “petty cash,” “transportation,” “interpreting” or “supplies.”
From 2011 through 2015, Forthun and Humenny wrote more than 400 checks, totaling at least $500,000.
Forthun structured the scheme in a way that would maximize Comprehensive Rehab’s billings to the insurance companies. Forthun and Humenny withheld kickback payments to the runners until after the patients had attended a certain number of treatment sessions, typically between six and 12.
Frequently, the runners gave a large portion of the kickback payments they had received to the patients they had referred in order to make sure that patients attended the minimum number of treatment sessions. Thus, the kickback payments were intended to ensure that patients came for treatments at Comprehensive Rehab because of the payments, as opposed to the necessity and reasonableness of the treatments.
Through the execution of their fraud scheme, Fothun and Humenny billed millions of dollars to the auto insurance companies.
This case is the result of an investigation conducted by the Minnesota Commerce Fraud Bureau and the FBI. Additional assistance was provided by the Minneapolis Police Department, Saint Paul Police Department, Minnesota State Patrol and Homeland Security Investigations.
Source: Minnesota Commerce Department
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