US District Judge Henry E. Autrey on Thursday sentenced a chiropractor from Jefferson County, Missouri to four years in prison and ordered her to repay $16.4 million lost to disability fraud, US Attorney Sayler A. Fleming announced Friday. Vivian Carbone-Hobbs, now 61, of Fenton, was convicted by a jury in US District Court in St. Louis in February of conspiracy to defraud the Social Security Administration, 10 counts of healthcare fraud and two counts of theft of money from the United States. Carbone-Hobbs and her 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.
