A Kingsburg chiropractor was one of twelve employees of the former Fresno-based Accident Help Line Medical Group that were arrested recently on felony insurance fraud charges.

The arrests came after a 3-1/2 year investigation by the California Department of Insurance.

Mark Peter Lungren, 34, of Kingsburg, was one of six licensed chiropractors taken into custody.

Each of the suspects is accused of a minimum of four felony counts of fraud and could receive up to eight years in prison and up to a $200,000 fine.

Accident Help Line is no longer in business, but a company spokesman said that the company has cooperated with the investigation.

The arrests were made between Sept. 14-19 by investigators from the Department of Insurance as well as the Kings and Fresno counties district attorney's offices. They followed a reported undercover investigation in which the insurance department found the Fresno, Hanford and Madera clinics run by the company allegedly provided excessive and unnecessary treatment to patients for the purpose of overbilling insurance companies.

Eight of those arrested were Fresno County residents. Another was from Hanford, another from the Madera County town of Raymond and two other suspects from San Francisco and Sparks, Nev.

Those arrested included Fresno residents Jason Everett Walker, 35; Marisela Vargas-Montes, 40; Emma Mendez-Defarless, 25; Ronald James Richards, 58; and Elizabeth Rodriguez, 26. Hanford physicians assistant William Edward Scheaffer, 60 was arrested along with Eva Soria Prieto, 21, of Orange Cove. Chiropractors Ralph Gregory Howell, 58 and Lorene Louise Hebert, 45, of Raymond, were also arrested.

Mikel R. Meyer, a Sparks, Nev., doctor of osteopathy and Charles Richard Affatato, 34, a San Francisco chiropractor, were the other two arrested.