Warning: Distressing Content
Residents at four NY nursing homes forced to live under horrible conditions while execs stole $83M: AG James
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.
