Before being sentenced last week to home incarceration for conspiracy to commit health-care fraud, a thin and frail-looking Tammy Cashion pleaded her case before a federal-court judge. Crying, she asked for leniency and told him the harm her devious behavior had done to her life.

"I stand here accepting full responsibility for my actions," she said. "They’ve had the most devastating effect on my family and my marriage. "I brought shame upon my patients, my family, my friends and my community."

Similarly, on Tuesday, her husband Paul Curcio told a federal magistrate, "I’ve suffered irreparable damage to my practice and my reputation, and I am remorseful."

Having built a thriving chiropractic business in Centreville over the past two decades, Cashion and Curcio were considered fine, upstanding members of the community. Warm and caring toward their patients at Chiropractic Family Health Centre in the Centreville Square Shopping Center, they were successful and respected. 

But at some point, they and their associate chiropractor, Benjamin Hopsicker, conspired to bilk health-insurance companies for more money than was legally owed them. This went on from April 2008-April 2009. Eventually, a federal investigation began, and all three were arrested and charged with criminal behavior in regard to this fraudulent conduct.

On Jan. 25 in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, both Curcio and Cashion were convicted. Cashion, 48, pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy to commit health-care fraud, and Curcio, 47, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit misdemeanor theft.

The Clifton couple returned to court, within the past week, to learn their punishments. Besides receiving probation and stiff fines, they were each sentenced to eight months home incarceration with an electronic, monitoring device. 

According to statements of fact filed with their plea agreements, besides performing chiropractic adjustments which were properly billed to insurance companies, "both Cashion and Curcio conspired with Hopsicker to bill for physical therapy ostensibly performed on their patients — when the therapy was either not performed, at all — or was not performed for a sufficient length of time to be billable under the American Medical Association’s CPT codes." 

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