N.C. Chiropractor Helped Stage Accidents, Treated Patients

A Rocky Mount, N.C. chiropractor who encouraged people to stage car crashes and then seek fake treatment from him has been sentenced to seven years in prison.

For about three years, Mark McKinnon cheated insurance companies out of hundreds of thousands of dollars through his practice, the Accident and Injury Center of Rocky Mount, court records said.

McKinnon pleaded guilty to health care fraud in January. U.S. District Judge Louise Flanagan last week sentenced him to seven years in prison, court records and attorneys involved in the case said. He is expected to repay insurance companies $350,000.

McKinnon paid patients and his employees to stage accidents, court papers said.

McKinnon declined to comment except to say he was cooperating with prosecutors.

A patient who filed fake insurance claims eventually became an informant who spurred the state Insurance Department and the U.S. Secret Service to investigate, court documents said. Federal and state agents posed as patients to learn about McKinnon’s tactics.

During one visit to McKinnon’s practice, he instructed an informant about how to carry out an accident scam involving two drivers who cooperate to cause an accident, court documents said. The first vehicle slows, causing a second car behind it to brake and a third car driven by the victim to crash into the rear of the second car. The first car flees before police arrive.

McKinnon also coached patients on the best accidents to fake. McKinnon told the patient-turned-informant during a September 2003 phone call it was better to have a two-car collision than a hit-and-run because it set up opportunities to file claims against both insurance companies, court documents stated.

The government and McKinnon agreed the losses from the fraud were more than $200,000 but less than $400,000, court documents said. The government seized two of his bank accounts in December 2003. McKinnon in April 2004 gave prosecutors details about his schemes and other cases the government was unaware of, court documents said.

McKinnon has since filed for bankruptcy. Since August 2004, he has worked as a science teacher at a Halifax County high school, according to school officials.

According to court documents and bankruptcy filings, he has lost his Porsche sports car, Lincoln Navigator sport-utility vehicle and home in Sunset Beach and divorced his wife.