Bradley Mattson, 51, a Lake Forest resident and the part owner of six suburban chiropractor clinics, was sentenced to six and a half years in federal prison for fraud, the Justice Department announced Monday. 

The specific charges were intending to defraud a private health insurance company of nearly $5.9 million and causing an actual loss of more than $2 million by submitting false claims for certain services that were not medically necessary or were not provided to patients, the Justice Department said in a press release. 

Mattson pleaded guilty in September to one count of health care fraud, the release said, admitting that he engaged in a 10-year scheme to defraud Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois through all six clinics that he owned with two co-defendents.

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Between 1999 and 2009, according to the release, Mattson co-owned and operated Hawthorn Physical Medicine in Vernon Hills, Woodfield Physical Medicine in Schaumburg, Stratford Physical Medicine in Bloomingdale, Algonquin Physical Medicine in Lake in the Hills, Northshore Physical Medicine in Niles and Cumberland Physical Medicine in Norridge with co-defendents Steven Paul and Neelesh Patel, who are also both chiropractors.

According to the Justice Department press release, court records stated that Mattson would direct patients to receive an initial x-ray and pre-set schedule of clinic visits for a period of six months without regard to the actual medical necessity. He also had the clinics' staff order MRI exams and neurological diagnostic testing without regard to necessity.

Matson, who will begin serving his sentence on Jan. 25, was also ordered to be restitution totaling $2,097,031, the release said.

Paul, 41, of Northbrook is awaiting sentencing after also pleading guilty to one count of health care fraud in September, the Justice Department said. The charges against Patel, 37, of Glenview are still pending.

The men are among 91 defendants charged across the country for submitting $295 million in false billing to Medicare and private insurance companies, a previous Patch article reported.

The government was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Renai S. Rodney.