Two former employees of a now-closed Missouri chiropractic clinic are being punished for conspiring to defraud the Social Security Administration of more than $3.5 million in disability payments.
Christina Barrera, 64, of St. Louis was sentenced Thursday to 14 months in federal prison, and Clarissa Pogue, 40, of Desoto was sentenced to five years’ probation and six months of home confinement. They were both convicted in a federal jury trial in St. Louis in February of conspiring to defraud the Social Security Administration. Barrera was also ordered to repay more than $540,000 to the federal government, while Pogue was ordered to repay $286,000.
The two women worked for Power-Med, a chiropractic clinic in Arnold in Jefferson County, south of St. Louis. The owner, chiropractor Vivian Carbone-Hobbs, and her husband, Thomas Hobbs, pleaded guilty in January to fraud charges.
Authorities said the scheme included charging patients thousands of dollars in exchange for filling out disability forms, and coaching them on how to lie to insurance companies and to Social Security officials on lacking the ability to perform basic functions such as walking, sitting, standing, and lifting objects.
Hobbs and Carbone-Hobbs are scheduled to be sentenced later this year.
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