SF Gate reports that a licensed chiropractor who worked out of an office in Daly City pleaded no contest to felony insurance fraud and other charges related to a food allergy test that he offered even though it was not covered by insurance companies and has not been proven effective, prosecutors said.

Benjamin Zimberoff Darrow, 48, had been charged with insurance fraud, the unlicensed practice of medicine, illegal laboratory markup and the theft of over $100,000, and faces up to two years in prison, according to the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office.

Darrow operated three businesses out of the same office — Darrow Chiropractic, Pacific Spine and Joint, and Coastside Medical — and often offered patients a food allergy test called ALCAT that involved drawing a blood sample in the office, prosecutors said.

Darrow performed the test on more than 250 patients and claimed to have been performing the blood work on site, but instead was paying about $600 to send them to an outside lab, prosecutors said.

The test was not covered by insurance because of its ineffectiveness at testing for food allergies, but Darrow manipulated the way he billed for it to disguise the fact that he was performing the ALCAT test.

He billed insurance companies about $3,000 per test, receiving more than $790,000 in improper insurance payouts as a result, according to the district attorney’s office.

Darrow remains out of custody on $350,000 bond and will return to court on July 2 for sentencing. His attorney was not immediately available to comment on the case.