Five Towns residents sued by New York State Attorney General

What I care about is these people are held accountable.”

Darlene Stevens, sister of late nursing home resident

Two Five Towns residents who own a number of nursing homes are being sued by state Attorney General Letitia James, who claims that they and a dozen others embezzled nearly $19 million from Medicare and Medicaid that was intended for the care of patients at a facility upstate.

James alleges that Bernard Fuchs, the owner of the Villages of Orleans Health & Rehabilitation Center, Benjamin Landa, another owner of many nursing homes, and others illegally redirected $18.6 million from Medicaid and Medicare to two organizations that own the Villages of Orleans property and manage the facility.

Fuchs lives in Lawrence, and Landa is from Woodmere.

Fuchs is an owner or part owner of 93 nursing homes across the nation, including several in New York state, according to NursingHome.org.

Landa is the founder and chief executive of Sentosa Care, one of the state’s largest nursing home chains, and owns 100 nursing homes nationwide, according to Skilled Nursing News.

Between 2015 and 2021, James’s suit alleges, the Villages received $86.4 million in Medicare and Medicaid funding intended for resident care. The owners cut staffing to increase profits, she asserts, and diverted the health care funding through payments to Telegraph Realty and CHMS Group.

“Every individual deserves to live out their golden years in comfort and with dignity,” James stated in a news release. “Yet the abject failure of The Villages and its owners to uphold their duty under the law caused residents to suffer inhumane treatment, neglect, and harm.”

Several of Fuchs’s relatives are also named in the suit.

Landa, who owns the Five Towns Premier Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Woodmere, is also alleged by James to be part of a group that committed financial fraud totaling more than $22 million at the Cold Spring Hills Center for Nursing & Rehabilitation in Woodbury.

Neither Landa’s attorney, Howard Fensterman, nor Fuchs returned calls seeking comment.

James said many patients at both facilities experienced neglect and inhumane treatment.

Darlene Stevens, a resident of upstate Red Creek, said her brother, whom she declined to name, was a patient at the Villages.

Her brother was born mentally disabled, and had the cognitive ability of a 5-year-old when he died at 60 on Jan. 26, 2022.

Though he was normally in the care of an aid service in his apartment in Wolcott, he was admitted to the Villages on Dec. 30, 2020, and stayed there for nine months.

During that time, Stevens said, there was a lack of communication from staff members when she tried to check on her brother’s status, because there was a shortage of staff.

“When you talk about cutting staff — there was nobody around,” Stevens told the Herald. “I would call there for hours, and I’m not exaggerating.”

In September 2021, her brother was admitted to Rochester General Hospital because he was “not doing well,” Darlene Stevens said, according to his nurses. He had lost a great deal of weight while in the Villages’ care, dropping from 167 to 125 pounds. It appeared to his sister that his physical deterioration prohibited him from eating.

With her brother in the hospital, she said, “It was the first time in nine months that I could go to bed at night that he was cared for.”

James is suing to prohibit the Villages from admitting new residents until staffing levels meet appropriate standards. She said she wants the facility to pay for a receiver and a monitor to oversee its financial operations, which would require a judge’s order.

Families that were affected, not including Stevens, have filed a class action lawsuit against the facility. “I don’t care about that,” Stevens said of the suit. “What I care about is these people are held accountable. How dare they let human beings die as they did.”