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| Kenneth Rozenberg (right) and Daryl Hagler allegedly stole $83 million in funding. |
Operators of four New York nursing homes siphoned more than $83 million in Medicare and Medicaid funding to line their own pockets — all while allowing residents to live under horrific conditions, including letting them sit for hours in their own filth, state Attorney General Letitia James alleges in a new lawsuit.
Kenneth Rozenberg and Daryl Hagler, the co-owners of Centers Health Care, pilfered the government cash meant for the care of nursing home residents at four facilities in the Empire State, according to the AG’s suit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court Wednesday.
Going back as early as 2013, Rozenberg and Hagler weaved a complex web involving networks of other corporations and fraudulent transactions to enrich themselves, their family members and other business associates, the filing claims.
The scheme left their facilities were chronically understaffed, resulting in the widespread neglect of elderly residents who were forced to remain in their own urine and feces for hours, were allowed to become dehydrated and malnourished and whose wounds were left to fester, the suit alleges.
And while these problems had been going on for a while before the pandemic, when COVID-19 struck the struggling facilities collapsed — with 400 residents of all four homes dying from the virus in 2020, James claimed.
The facilities included the Beth Abraham Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in the Bronx; the Buffalo Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing; Holliswood Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare in Queens and Martine Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Westchester.
One Beth Abraham Center resident broke her hip in October 2020 after falling multiple times when taking herself to the bathroom when her calls for assistance went unanswered, the AG claimed.
Another woman at the Buffalo center wasn’t evaluated despite taking a spill from her bed and when her daughter visited, she found her mother unconscious. The elderly woman was later diagnosed with a brain bleed, according to the suit.
In one particularly egregious case, a man at Martine Center died of sepsis because his bed sores weren’t properly cared for and they turned into ulcers, James alleged.
James wants a judge to stop the homes from being able to take on any new residents until they hire proper amounts of staffing.
The AG also called for monitors to be put in place to oversee the financial and healthcare at the facilities and is seeking for the defendants to return the $83 million they allegedly embezzled.
“The owners of Centers Health Care allegedly used these four nursing homes — and the vulnerable New Yorkers who lived there — to extract millions of dollars for their personal use, leading to elderly residents and those with disabilities suffering unconscionable pain, neglect, degradation, and even death,” James said in a statement.
“Rather than honor their legal duty to residents to provide the highest possible quality of life, Centers leadership and their associates seized every opportunity to put personal profit over resident care,” James alleged.
Jeff Jacomowitz, a spokesperson with Centers Health Care, denied the allegations and vowed to fight the case in court.
“Centers Health Care prides itself on its commitment to patient care,” Jacomowitz said. “Centers denies the New York Attorney General’s allegations wholeheartedly and attempted to resolve this matter out of court.”
“We will fight these spurious claims with the facts on our side.”
The AG has filed three other similar lawsuit against nursing homes including another that accused the owners of the Village of Orleans Health and Rehabilitation Center in Albion of stealing $18 million and leaving residents in inhumane conditions.
3 comments:
Reminds me of the nursing home Yidishe wise guys back in the day who got filthy rich by preserving the elderly gentile corpses in the fridge to continue to collect their Social Security (along with the sales of Jewish Yemenite toddlers stolen from their parents in Israel).
My wife works as a nurse care manager for Centers Plan, and when I showed her this post, she was outraged. This is a horrible lie. The nursing staff are dedicated hard working people and any suggestion that patients are not cared for properly is false. If ever an unfortunate event occurs, it is because when you are dealing with thousands of patients, such occurrences are inevitable and not indicative of negligence. What we have is the new definition of justice courtesy of Letitia James and Alvin Bragg, where perpetrators of violent crimes are rewarded with luxury accommodations and gourmet meals, while victims of those criminals are indicted and charged.
In February of 2021, I contracted COVID and came down with pneumonia while visiting my son in Florida. I was hospitalized over Shabbos at the Cleveland Clinic, supposedly a premier health facility. While attempting to rise from my wheelchair a nurse dropped me, and I broke my foot. Because of COVID restrictions, I was not able to have any family with me. I was at the mercy of the inadequate nursing care. The entire hospital staff were members of diverse cultures, none of which were Anglo-Saxon. Their names were unpronounceable, and no one spoke intelligible English. I think they were talking to me in some sort of dialect of Pashto. In any event, I tried to explain to the nurses that I had just suffered an injury, but it was to no avail. As to any treatment for my COVID, it did not happen.
It was the most horrific experience in my life, and I barely survived it. I could have brought a lawsuit against the hospital, but in this political climate, any award for damages would be minimal and probably not be settled in my lifetime. I decided to move on instead of having to spend years giving depositions.
My point is that to AG James, Jews are considered low hanging fruit, and specifically targeted for prosecution, while she continues to indemnify those with whom she culturally affiliated.
Before you make any final judgments.
As an insider, this lawsuit is politically motivated by someone that accomplished ZERO and ran on indicting Trump. She has to make a name for herself, and rich jews are always an easy target.
The nature of a SNF is somewhere that they treat very acute people and is a person's final home.
No matter how you staff a facility it's never enough. The advocates always want more.
The AG is hurting good people that run solid operations and give Stellar care; for personal gain.
We've unfortunately seen this time and time again.
The Chilul Hashem is Letita James and the communities that support her agenda.
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