www.Patch.com, Cailin Loesch, August 1, 2023
EAST MEADOW, NY — A Huntington man who was operating in East Meadow as a licensed chiropractor was sentenced to a year in prison Monday after pleading guilty to health care fraud charges, the United States Attorney's Office said in a news release.
Peter Adamczak, 66, pleaded guilty in August 2022 to billing a private insurance company over $1 million from 2016 to 2020 for acupuncture services that were never performed, officials said.
Adamczak was not licensed to perform acupuncture but claimed the procedure was performed by an unaffiliated acupuncturist who leased his office space, according to officials. In reality, none of the billed acupuncture services were performed at all, officials said.
"Today’s sentence demonstrates that Adamczak’s long-running scheme, in which he brazenly submitted false and fraudulent billing claims to an insurance provider, ultimately came at a personal cost to the defendant," United States Attorney Breon Peace said in the news release Monday. "This Office will continue to hold accountable dishonest healthcare professionals who abuse the trust placed in them by lying and cheating in order to line their own pockets."
Based on Adamczak’s fraudulent claims, the private insurance company paid reimbursements to its beneficiaries, who then delivered the payments to Adamczak, according to officials. In one case, a beneficiary who was a relative of Adamczak deposited the reimbursement checks to their personal bank account and kept the funds, officials said.
As part of his sentence, Adamczak has also been ordered to pay nearly $1 million in restitution and to forfeit over $180,000, according to officials. Article Here