A warrant has been issued for the previous proprietor of Skyline nursing houses in a number of states, Arkansas Legal professional Common Leslie Rutledge introduced final week.
Amongst amenities as soon as owned by Joseph Schwartz — and nonetheless co-owned by his son — is a Sussex County nursing house discovered with a packed, makeshift morgue early within the COVID pandemic.
The 61-year-old Schwartz, of Brooklyn, is accused of eight counts of Medicaid fraud, based on Rutledge, for over-billing in Arkansas by greater than $6 million in 2018.
Because of this, Schwartz obtained an overpayment of $3.6 million for the eight nursing house amenities enrolled within the Arkansas Medicaid Program.
Louis Schwartz took half possession of his father’s facility in Sussex County, alongside Chaim Scheinbaum, again in Could 2017, based on Medicare information.
Someday after the April 2020 grim discovery of 17 our bodies piled up in a morgue meant to carry not more than 5, Andover was break up and renamed the Limecrest Subacute and Rehabilitation Middle and Woodland Behavioral and Nursing Middle.
Federal officers later issued a quarter-million {dollars} in fines stemming from the unsafe situations.
The Facilities for Medicare & Medicaid Providers, which inspects nursing houses, stated in a subsequent report that the Andover Subacute and Rehabilitation II facility didn’t observe correct an infection management and that its non-compliance “has brought on, or was prone to trigger, severe damage, hurt impairment or demise to residents.”
Joseph Schwartz can be charged with failing to pay greater than $2 million withheld from his Arkansas workers’ paychecks to the state of Arkansas from July 2017 to March 2018.
In 2019, NBC Information reported on the monetary collapse of Schwartz’s Skyline Healthcare empire, which had grown to greater than 100 properties in not less than six states earlier than the burden of a number of lawsuits and state probes amid claims of neglect and mismanagement.
All the operation had been primarily based out of a Bergen County workplace, above a pizzeria and a barbershop in Wooden-Ridge, as beforehand reported by NorthJersey.com.
A lawsuit filed in federal court docket in New Jersey in January 2020 accused Joseph Schwartz and his spouse, Rosie Schwartz, of stealing greater than $2 million from workers’ paychecks that was speculated to pay for his or her medical insurance,.
It was filed by 5 individuals who had labored at Skyline-operated amenities in Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota, who collectively sought class-action standing, as reported beforehand by the Related Press.
“These costs come after a 44-month-long investigation into Skyline’s wrongdoings, and I can’t sit idly by whereas anybody defrauds the State and Federal authorities out of tens of millions of {dollars} to line their very own pockets,” Rutledge stated in a written assertion.
The previous Andover long-term care facility has been going through a class-action lawsuit, filed by sons of one of many sufferers who died there in early April 2020.
Bernard and Dante Maglioli, the sons of 85-year-old Joseph Maglioli, have been suing Scheinbaum and his firm, Alliance Healthcare primarily based in Lakewood, claiming gross negligence, wrongful demise and medical malpractice.
The lawsuit claims that the power was conscious of the rising pandemic in February 2020, however “didn’t take the correct steps to guard the residents and/or sufferers at their amenities.”
Greater than 80 sufferers on the house died, attributed to COVID-19, within the following weeks, based on the go well with.
Contact reporter Erin Vogt at Erin.Vogt@townsquaremedia.com. With earlier reporting by Sergio Bichao and Dan Alexander
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