Chiropractic office owner admits scam over billing

The owner of two North Philadelphia chiropractic offices pleaded guilty yesterday to defrauding health insurers by submitting phony patient claims and agreed to pay $1 million in fines and restitution.

William S. Matura, 60, a chiropractor who lives in Merion, pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to commit health-care fraud and obstruction of a health-care investigation.

Under his plea agreement, Matura must pay the $1 million within 90 days of his June 23 sentencing. Matura and his wife, Suzanne, agreed to forfeit, if needed, their home and their Ocean City, N.J., vacation home and all or part of 14 Philadelphia commercial properties and investment accounts.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joan L. Markman said Matura also faces a likely 87- to 108-month no-parole prison term under federal sentencing guidelines.

Matura was indicted in November with two chiropractors and a clerical employee who worked for him at his two offices on Erie Avenue in the Tioga section. The four were accused of stealing about $2 million from eight health insurers in a scheme that ran from 1997 through April 2002.

Matura was the last of the four to plead guilty. The chiropractors - Richard Capacio, 45, of Sicklerville in Camden County, and Lewis Korff, 53, of North Philadelphia - and clerk Maria Alfaro, 36, of the city's Olney section, are all awaiting sentencing.

According to court documents filed in connection with Matura's guilty plea, Matura in 1996 told his staff he needed to generate more income to avoid layoffs.

To do so, the documents say, Matura and his chiropractors utilized a computerized bar-code scanning device they used to create records and bills for treatment provided to patients.

Matura and his staff scanned into the computer therapy codes for patients who did not appear for scheduled appointments and then billed health insurers.

According to recorded seized in April 2002 when the FBI and Postal Inspection Service agents searched Matura's offices, about 50 charts a week were fraudulently scanned from each of Matura's offices.

Most of the false claims were for personal-injury patients and averaged $112 - more than $3 million in fraudulent billings extrapolated over the term of the scheme. Matura personally got $1.3 million from the scheme, the documents add.

The obstruction charge to which Matura pleaded guilty involved record tampering and shredding he and employees performed after the April 2002 search to try to derail the probe.