OSCEOLA COUNTY, Fla. – Before a man allegedly killed his wife, three kids and the family dog at a home in Celebration, he was under federal investigation related to his physical therapy practice in Connecticut.
Osceola County Sheriff Russ Gibson said deputies went to the residence on Reserve Place Monday morning to help federal agents serve an arrest warrant for Anthony Todt. While they were there, investigators found his family dead in the home, according to authorities.
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Records from the United States Department of Health and Human Services show Todt was accused of billing insurance companies for physical therapy services he never performed at Family Physical Therapy in Colchester, Connecticut.
Six people who were either patients at Family Physical Therapy or the parents of patients reported that their insurance was billed for appointments they never attended, in some cases, hundreds of times.
Allegations surface
According to federal documents, the investigation into Todt’s billing practices started in April 2019.
A mother of two children who both attended the practice was the first to speak with agents. The children attended sessions at the office many times and would always get back-to-back appointments. Usually, they would meet with a pediatric specialist and in the event that one wasn’t available, they would meet with Todt.
They generally went twice a week and each session lasted about 30 minutes.
The mother said the practice “was a mess” due to a high turnover rate and sometimes the children would see therapists who didn’t know how to treat them because they couldn’t access their patient records.
In 2018, the practice no longer had a pediatric specialist available so the mother took her children elsewhere. She said it took four months for Family Physical Therapy to send the patient records to the new office. When asked about the delay, Todt replied, “I’ve been busy, I’ll get to it.”
When the records arrived, authorities said both children had identical files even though they had different conditions that required different treatment.
The mother said she also discovered that Family Physical Therapy often billed Medicaid for appointments three to five times a week even though they never went to the office more than twice in the same week.
It was later discovered that Todt fraudulently billed insurance for 163 appointments for one of the children and 175 appointments the second child never attended.
A pattern emerges
That mother was just one of the witnesses who reported billing errors.
One woman said her son’s Medicaid and Cigna were billed for appointments even after he was medically cleared to return to playing basketball on Oct. 25, 2017. Between Jan. 1, 2018 and May 3, 2018, the practice received $5,209 from Medicaid and $4,685 from Cigna, records show.
An additional 64 appointments were billed for the boy between July 2, 2018, and Dec. 5, 2018, after the family had moved to North Carolina. Officials said Medicaid paid $7,077 for those claims.
Another woman said her child stopped attending physical therapy appointments on July 29, 2018, yet she was still billed for appointments spanning into 2019, amounting to a total of $22,964 paid from her insurance to Todt’s office.
A fourth woman discovered the billing errors when she was going over tax documents with her accountant in March 2019. She said her insurance was billed as often as three or four times a week even after she and her family stopped going to the office in February 2019.
Records show her insurance paid Todt’s office $16,928 for fraudulent appointments between Feb. 11, 2019, and March 21, 2019.
The fifth witness said she was billed for 10 appointments in 2016, 128 dates in 2018 and 40 appointments in 2019, amounting to $21,493 paid for by her insurance.
The sixth and final person interviewed as a witness explained that his daughter was a patient at Family Physical Therapy for a period of about six or seven weeks for a total of about 10 sessions, yet his insurance was billed for 103 appointments in 2019.
“That’s fraud,” the man said. “They [are] taking advantage of the system.”
Search warrants executed
Federal agents said that on Oct. 4, 2019, they executed a search warrant on Todt’s patient software to see if the six witnesses were seen on the days for which their insurance was billed.
Not only was that the case, but Todt was also submitting claims for appointments that were said to have occurred on Saturdays when the office was closed.
Other records uncovered that Todt and his business had taken out loans from over 20 different lenders. In August 2017 alone, agents said that Family Physical Therapy paid $99,000 to some of those lenders, including Fix Capital, Prime Business and On Deck Capital.
Another search warrant was executed at Todt’s two offices on Nov. 21, 2019. This time, he was present and spoke with investigators.
Todt admits to fraud
According to the report, Todt said he’d been running his practice for 11 years and he was the only one responsible for billing insurance.
At first, he denied billing for appointments that never occurred but then he admitted that he would randomly choose patients and bill their insurance for extra claims. He said no one else, even his wife who was involved in the practice, knew what he was doing.
Todt said he borrowed money from lenders “because it was easier” and he billed for extra services to make payments on his loans.
When asked if he was living above his means, Todt replied, “That’s the best way to put it.”
After that conversation, Todt was told to get an attorney and stay in touch with agents.
Records show authorities didn’t see him again until Monday when he was found in a Celebration home along with the bodies of his wife, 42-year-old Megan Todt, and their three children, 11-year-old Tyler Todt, 13-year-old Alek Todt, 4-year-old Zoe Todt, as well as the family dog, Breezy.
Between then and November, agents repeatedly tried to set up meetings with Todt. His employees said he hadn’t been to work and their paychecks started bouncing before they stopped arriving altogether.
His office was closed earlier this month after the landlord reported that he owed $6,000 in back rent.
Todt was arrested Wednesday on four counts of first-degree murder and one count of animal cruelty. He’s being held at the Osceola County Jail.