St. Paul attorney charged in scheme to rip off auto insurers with false chiropractic claims

Josh Verges, Pioneer Press
·1 min read
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A St. Paul personal injury lawyer was part of a scheme to defraud auto insurers by recruiting patients for chiropractic services, according to a conspiracy charge filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court.

Brad Ratgen, 52, was charged with conspiracy to commit health care fraud.

Prosecutors used a charging document called an information, not an indictment, which usually means the defendant has agreed to plead guilty to the charge. Ratgen is due in court for his arraignment Nov. 10.

According to the information, Ratgen conspired with others from at least 2015 through last December to defraud auto insurers under the state’s no-fault insurance law, which requires insurers to pay their clients’ medical bills, whether the crash was their fault or not.

It says he provided legal representation to a person he knew had been illegally recruited to be a chiropractic patient and who threatened a lawsuit against an auto insurance company.

Federal prosecutors in Minnesota have charged at least 20 others for their roles in similar frauds in the last six years.

In December 2016, they announced charges against four chiropractors who reportedly raked in millions of dollars through “nearly identical” but independent conspiracies; 15 patient recruiters, known as “runners,” also were charged at the time.

Ratgen appears to be the second attorney charged in the same kind of scheme. In November 2020, Minnetonka attorney William Kyle Sutor III was sentenced to 16 months in prison after he admitted to hiring runners who claimed to have been injured in car crashes.

Ratgen, who lives in Hugo and has a law office in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood, did not return a phone message Wednesday.

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