Club Owner Pleads Guilty to Health Care Fraud
advertisement
Interact With Us
Best of 2011
Top Stories of 2011
The most popular stories of 2011. Did your favorites make our list?
Resource Center
Buyers Guide
Find industry businesses by product or service categories, view company profiles and more.
Club Industry Trade Show
Club Industry Show and Conference, held each October, is the premier event for fitness and wellness professionals. Find out more about Exhibitors, Events, and Education.
Industry Events & Trade Shows
The industry-wide calendar features listings for educational events, trade shows and more.
Classifieds
View classified ads for health club equipment and services, plus business opportunities and job postings.
Current Issue
Read stories from the latest print issue of Club Industry magazine.
Club info and News
Read news about some of the biggest names in the industry.
- 24 Hour Fitness
- Anytime Fitness
- Bally Total Fitness
- Crunch Fitness
- Club One
- Curves
- Equinox
- Gold's Gym
- Health Fitness Corp.
- LA Fitness
- Life Time Fitness
- Lifestyle Family Fitness
- Planet Fitness
- Plus One Management
- Powerhouse Gyms
- Snap Fitness
- Spectrum Athletic Clubs
- Sport & Health
- Town Sports International
- Sports Club Co.
- Urban Active
- Wellbridge
- Western Athletic Clubs
- World Gym
E-Newsletter Signup
Breaking news on the industry, people on the move, mergers and acquisitions and much more. Delivered weekly.
HATFIELD, PA -- The owner of Hatfield (PA) Athletic Club and a Philadelphia-area chiropractor recently pleaded guilty to health care fraud and mail fraud.
Michael Karp, the club owner, and chiropractor Raymond Brozek entered their pleas in late May and are scheduled to be sentenced in September, according to Philadelphia’s Intelligencer. They each face a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. Because each pleaded guilty, Karp and Brozek could face shorter prison terms, the newspaper reports.
A former owner of the club, Mark Levin, is expected to plead guilty today in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Levin is charged with health care fraud in connection with the operation that cost Independence Blue Cross (IBC) $1.9 million in fraudulent medical bills, according to the newspaper. Levin faces a maximum of 10 years in jail and a $250,000 fine.
Karp and Levin ran a chiropractic and rehabilitation facility inside Hatfield Athletic Club called Rehab One, which is no longer in operation. Brozek was hired by Karp and Levin to perform chiropractic treatments at Rehab One, which fraudulently billed IBC for treatments that patients never received. The treatments also were deemed medically unnecessary and not reimbursable.
In March, Hatfield Athletic Club general manager Frank Borusiewicz who retains all management responsibility of the club, would not comment on the future of the club’s ownership situation. Borusiewicz did say that Hatfield Athletic Club’s three tenants—a martial arts academy, a dance studio and a gymnastics program—are under separate ownership have not been affected by the case.
In a separate case in Philadelphia, federal authorities last week charged the owner of a club in Horsham, PA, of defrauding eight insurance companies by submitting $3 million worth of fraudulent bills, the Intelligencer reports. Joseph Lerner, a chiropractor who owns the Horsham Fitness Club, allegedly ran the fraud from January 2007 to March 2010 and collected almost $2 million, according to the newspaper.
Lerner allegedly told people they could receive massages and personal training for the price of a $10 insurance co-payment by having their insurance companies pay for the services, prosecutors say. Lerner submitted the bills even though insurers do not cover those services, according to the newspaper.
Want to use this article? Click here for options!
© 2012 Penton Media Inc.











Acceptable Use Policy blog comments powered by Disqus