Philip Esformes, a nursing home operator, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in a Medicare fraud case before President Trump commuted his sentence this week.Credit…Rob Latour/Invision, via Associated Press
Dear Reader:
We applaud the decision on the part of the Department of Justice, which has announced that it intends to pursue the prosecution of the final 6 counts against Philip Esformes. The jurors failed to reach a conviction in April of 2019. The remaining counts were for “paying and receiving kickbacks, money laundering, bribery and obstruction of justice. A conviction on these counts would be a modicum of justice for the elderly and their families. While Esformes claims to be “spending most of his days studying with rabbis, working, reconnecting with his children, and taking care of his father…” In our opinion, there is no manner of decency Esformes can show that would compensate the hundreds of victims (and their families) of his crimes.
Donald Trump’s commutation of Esformes’ sentence was a deplorable act, in and of itself. The elderly and their families deserved better from their President at the time and they deserve justice now.
May 4—Concerned that a convicted healthcare mogul freed by then-President Donald Trump might flee the country, Justice Department prosecutors urged a federal judge Tuesday to confine Philip Esformes to his South Florida home with an electronic ankle monitor and impose a $10.5 million bond to ensure his appearance for a new trial.
But their request was effectively rebuffed, at least for now.
U.S. District Judge Robert Scola instead granted a request by Esformes’ defense team to postpone the government’s bond proposal until mid-August, when it will be taken up again.
Justice Department prosecutors recently said they will pursue unresolved charges from Esformes’ healthcare fraud trial in 2019, when a federal jury deadlocked on the main conspiracy charge and five other offenses but found him guilty of 20 corruption-related counts. Scola sentenced Esformes to 20 years in prison and ordered him to pay $5.3 million in restitution to the taxpayer-funded Medicare program and a $38 million forfeiture fine.
“The trust that he broke was of epic proportions,” Allan Medina, the lead prosecutor in the $1 billion healthcare fraud case against Esformes, said at Tuesday’s hearing.
The number of nursing home residents who died in the pandemic has been a particularly sensitive question for the Cuomo administration. Credit…Pool photo by Shannon Stapleton
Published 5.4.21 9:28am
Dear Reader:
Perhaps the punishment for cruelty to the elderly in nursing care should be lying in the same nursing home bed forced to wallow in excrement and urine. Were we to be a legislators, this would be the top of our bucket list. Alas, should the punishment not fit the crime? And yet, those with the courage to speak out are inevitably doomed.
Most of New York’s nursing homes or those owned throughout the United States by New York nursing home conglomerates, are a special brand of hell to the elderly living in them; and their owners and managers deserve accountability. Many are understaffed or staffed by undertrained employees. In most care is substandard, if there is care at all. In many the food is unpalatable or barely edible, but it is inexpensive. In all but a select few, elderly patients can spend hours sitting in their own excrement, thirsty for a drink, exposed to Covid-19 and other pathogens. There is no accountability. Where laws exist there is no oversight. It is a vicious cycle.
In some, the owners use the open spaces for parties and celebrations – a show of wealth and so-called hospitality. After all, a nursing home is a hospitality business. Even during Covid-19, at the worst of the outbreaks, we received reports of massive gatherings in the halls of some of these homes, catered by top kosher caterers, but not open to the patients and their families.
In all but a select few, money flows like water; and the only beneficiaries are the owners and operators, their investors and the politicians who benefit from political contributions. Name the horror and you will likely find it in New York’s nursing homes. Sadly, so many of the nursing homes are owned by different combinations of the same uber-wealthy individuals who have already sold their souls for money. Their attorneys shut their eyes, look the other way. It is really not an attorney’s job to judge. And the billing is glorious to those attorneys for whom these are their top clients. If one is without a conscience, a sense of morality, and is already adept at skirting laws, falsifying records and documents, paying off or discrediting those who get in their way – will new laws do anything but pay lipservice?
Factor in the guardians, many of whom are complete savages, and we have a lethal mix. Many of the patients are sent to nursing home hell by self-serving guardians who likely get hefty kickbacks – a “quid pro quo” of sorts. Most of New York’s nursing homes are for profit. Their ownership structure can be a moving target, crafted to avoid accountability. Many are financed by hedge funds, hedge fund owners and investment managers; or are publicly traded in various portfolios in the stock exchanges of the United States, Israel, the Canadian Stock Exchange and so many others. It is business, after all. Are we talking about human life? Irrelevant really. We are talking about money.
Guardianship is an extraordinary racket, a well-oiled machine which includes (but is not limited to) social workers, judges, politicians, guardians, medical staff, nursing staff, attorneys, the judiciary and the list goes on and on and on. It is a vicious cycle with little hope of breaking. We have been told it is an “open secret” in government and those who attack the system inevitably doom themselves to a loss of livelihood, reputation, financial well-being and even family safety. The people involved in this racket are like a close-knit family “the Gansa Mishpucha” for whom money leads, whatever conscious there is or may have been was set aside long ago.
The multitude of people involved are not morally bankrupt, as that implies there was something there to bankrupt in the first instance. That is a stretch. The elderly in many of the nations nursing homes are nothing more than financially lucrative chattel; lives of meaningless vulnerable people whose daily existence generates cash. It is a godless business.
New York’s nursing homes and their owners are some of the worst. And then there’s the governor, Andrew Cuomo and his aides who were complicit in setting in motion further devastation as Covid-19 ravaged the elderly. So what did they do? They created immunity – and another loophole to escape accountability. We have coined that immunity the “Granny Killer Immunity Provisions”. Cuomo’s political existence has depended, in large part, upon a significant donor pool that exists within the nursing home industry. He is the quintessential beneficiary of political largesse.
Creating laws that would protect our morally challenged nursing home owners was all part of the movement of money. Until Covid-19 put the brakes on that, at least temporarily it just kept going. The Granny Killer Immunity Provisions immunized nursing home owners, operators and managers and hospitals. Those provisions have been overturned but their creation should be a warning to anyone in this fight. If the power of the nursing home industry can have sway over Governor Cuomo, it will happen again.
There is an effort (see below) to place restrictions on nursing homes. We again pose this: restrictions mean nothing if there is no one there to enforce. Our government is a part of the problem. Enforcement will not happen and the crimes against humanity – our elderly and most vulnerable – will continue. Do we not owe them more lest we all be savages?
While Gov. Andrew Cuomo was securing a reported $4 million deal to write a book on his pandemic “leadership,” he and his staff were busy suppressing the truth about New York’s nursing-home deaths in the wake of the March 25 order that forced homes to admit COVID-contagious patients. And it now turns out the coverup was even worse than we’d thought.
On top of blocking health officials from telling the truth, senior staffers also quashed a scientific paper that reported the true fatality total, The New York Times reported.
A June 18 e-mail from top aide Melissa DeRosa to health officials shows Team Cuomo was “anxious” about a pending Department of Health report on nursing-home coronavirus fatalities and out to downplay the idea that the March 25 mandate had proved deadly.
The Cuomoites were publicly citing a nursing-home death toll of about 6,000 by ignoring home residents who’d died while hospitalized. The draft report shared the full count of over 9,700, noting that the homes accounted for “approximately 35 percent” of all NY coronavirus deaths. But DeRosa — who at the same time was intimately involved in the gov’s book-deal negotiations — and other staff got all that edited out. The final report said the homes only yielded 21 percent of the state’s virus death total, making it seem below, rather than above, the US average.
The feud between Ron Kim and Andrew Cuomo is not over yet.
Assemblyman Ron Kim and Governor Andrew Cuomo had a very raw, very public falling out this past February that essentially catapulted the nursing home scandal—in which Cuomo is accused of hiding the number of fatalities from COVID-19 within New York State nursing homes—into the media spotlight. Kim became a household name overnight after the local politician alleged Cuomo threatened to ruin his career. Now, Kim is calling upon the Attorney General to join the fight.
Kim gathered with Voices for Seniors members in Foley Square on Monday afternoon. In the shadow of the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, the assemblyman stood ahead of those who had lost elderly loved ones to the deadly virus calling out the Governor for what he says are “Some of the worst and deadly policies that this country has ever witnessed.”
“For ten months Andrew Cuomo only listened to the worst operators, the lobbyists, to put forward policies that were not only deadly but were irresponsible and criminal. So, we are here once again calling for full accountability for Andrew Cuomo’s unilateral decision-making around nursing homes, in particular, we are asking for the Attorney General and every other investigator who has now opened up investigations into Andrew Cuomo to look into him and his allies, and his administration committing fraud,” Kim said.
While Attorney General Letitia James is reportedly already conducting an investigation into the slew of sexual misconduct allegations levied at the head of state, this demand for action asks James to look into a cover-up of deaths within nursing homes. Kim also cited the importance of this proposed investigation to the families of the deceased who formed Voices for Seniors, a group that looks to improve the lives of the elderly through advocacy. Members of the organization clutched photographs of perished family members and signs dubbing the Governor a “super spreader,” blaming Cuomo for the deaths of their loved ones.
As part of its recent budget, New York State has enacted a new law that significantly impacts nursing home operators in New York. Effective January 1, 2022, the new Section 2828 of the Public Health Law requires, among other things, that:
Not less than 70% of nursing home revenues shall be spent on direct resident care costs;
40% of the nursing home revenues must be spent on staff who work directly with patients (so-called resident-facing staff, as that term is defined in Section 2828), which is included in amounts spent on direct resident care costs; and
Nursing home profits are limited to not more than 5%, and profits in excess of this threshold shall be turned over to the [sic]
Pursuant to the legislation, the Department of Health shall promulgate regulations in accordance with the new [sic]
Direct resident care is defined to include non-revenue support services (e.g., maintenance and patient food service), ancillary services (e.g., laboratory and pharmacy services), and program services directly serving patients.
Direct resident care is defined to include non-revenue support services (e.g., maintenance and patient food service), ancillary services (e.g., laboratory and pharmacy services), and program services directly serving patients. Expenses that are specifically excluded as not related to patient care include, without limitation, administrative costs (other than nurse administration), capital costs, debt service, taxes (other than sales taxes or payroll taxes), capital depreciation, rent and leases, and fiscal services. Specifically excepted from the new law are nursing homes that provide certain specialized services, including, for example, behavioral intervention and neurodegenerative services.
Aides to the New York governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, repeatedly prevented state health officials from releasing the number of nursing home deaths in the pandemic.
Mr. Cuomo’s most senior aides engaged in a sustained effort to prevent the state’s own health officials, including the commissioner, Howard Zucker, from releasing the true death toll to the public or sharing it with state lawmakers, these interviews and documents showed.
A scientific paper, which incorporated the data, was never published. An audit of the numbers by a top Cuomo aide was finished months before it became publicly known. Two letters, drafted by the Health Department and meant for state legislators, were never sent.
And they came as the governor’s approach to nursing homes was receiving intensifying scrutiny from critics and Republicans, including former President Donald J. Trump, whose administration made a public show of requesting nursing home death data from four states with Democratic governors, including New York.
The number of nursing home residents who died in the pandemic has been a particularly sensitive question for the Cuomo administration.
The number of nursing home residents who died in the pandemic has been a particularly sensitive question for the Cuomo administration.
This is being published on 5.3.21 at 11:11am – type edited at 3:05pm.
HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN:
If this is to be a thorough examination of the facts and circumstances surrounding Steinmetz, one cannot escape the inextricable link he has to Dan Gertler and, well, to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. There are no coincidences here.
We have posted information which should be food for thought below, as well as past stories on this subject.
Steinmentz pillaged in the West African nation of Guinea while Dan Gertler focused on the Democratic Republic of Congo. These men, mining magnates [uhhh… gangsters,] for lack of a better word, just drew maps on their turf. And, while all of this was happening, Kushner was drawing battle lines, protecting each from inside the White House. He helped to negotiate, or at least to facilitate, the parties liaising to raze the Magnitsky Act sanctions placed upon Dan Gertler; while at the same time somehow keeping Steinmetz out of the limelight.
It remains a question of how or why the Suisse government got involved in the Steinmetz case when they helped facilitate payments made by Glencore to Gertler around the sanctions; but as we have said repeatedly, everything is orchestrated. It is a well-choreographed dance.
Let’s see what happens with Gertler. And, well… let’s see where the dust settles on Steinmetz
P.S. Each of these men has denied any wrongdoing.
Jared KushnerCredit…Shawn Thew/European Pressphoto Agency
Law360 (April 30, 2021, 8:12 PM EDT) — A New York judge on Thursday agreed to consider additional arguments that Israeli billionaire Beny Steinmetz is the alter ego of a company that owes Brazilian miner Vale SA more than $2.17 billion following a dispute over an ill-fated Guinean mining project.
U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick ordered Vale to provide supplemental briefing in support of its bid to force Steinmetz to respond to its discovery requests, which it sent to the businessman over a year ago.
Israeli billionaire Beny Steinmetz leaves the courthouse after a verdict on corruption charges, in Geneva, Switzerland January 22, 2021. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
REUTERS
GENEVA (Reuters) – In a landmark verdict in one of the mining world’s most high profile legal cases, a Swiss criminal court found Israeli businessman Beny Steinmetz guilty of corruption and forgery on Friday and sentenced him to five years in jail with a sizeable fine.
The ruling after a two-week trial is a blow for Steinmetz, a diamond trader, whose pursuit of the world’s richest uptapped deposits of iron ore put him at the centre of a battle that has triggered probes and litigation around the world.
Steinmetz said he would appeal the verdict, which also included a 50 million Swiss francs ($56.48 million) fine.
“It is a big injustice,” he told reporters in the courtyard of the Geneva courthouse.
Steinmetz and two others were variously accused of paying or arranging payment of $10 million in bribes between 2006 and 2010 to Mamadie Toure, whom prosecutors say was one of the wives of the former president Lansana Conte, to obtain exploration permits for iron ore buried beneath the remote Simandou mountains of Guinea and of forging documents to cover it up through a web of shell companies and bank accounts.
Toure, who lives in Florida, could not be reached for comment.
All three defendants denied the charges.
Presiding judge Alexandra Banna said Steinmetz and his co-defendants had used fake accounts and attempted to have incriminating documents destroyed to hide their criminal behaviour.
Banna said that Steinmetz had made an immediate profit from the rights to mine and not a cent went to the West African nation of Guinea.
No one from the government in Guinea was immediately available to comment.
Steinmetz, 64, a former Geneva resident who moved back to Israel in 2016, has in the past been ranked as a billionaire and one of Israel’s wealthiest men. Asked by the court to estimate his personal fortune, he said it was $50-80 million.
In december 2017 Donald Trump’s administration imposed financial sanctions on Dan Gertler. That came as a shock to the government of Joseph Kabila, who was then the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mr Gertler, who was named alongside several allegedly crooked politicians and businessmen, was one of Mr Kabila’s closest friends. He was also a middlemanwho had sold much of Congo’s wealth in minerals to the world since arriving there in the wake of war in 1997.
America’s Treasury department said that Mr Gertler had “amassed his fortune through hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of opaque and corrupt mining and oil deals”. Between 2010 and 2012 alone Congo had “lost over $1.36 billion in revenues from the underpricing of mining assets that were sold to offshore companies linked to” the Israeli billionaire, it said. The sanctions froze Mr Gertler’s bank accounts and prevented any firm from doing business with him in dollars.
It was the summer of 2012, and Jared Kushner was headed downtown.
His family’s real estate firm, the Kushner Companies, would spend about $190 million over the next few months on dozens of apartment buildings in tony Lower Manhattan neighborhoods including the East Village, the West Village and SoHo.
For much of the roughly $50 million in down payments, Mr. Kushner turned to an undisclosed overseas partner. Public records and shell companies shield the investor’s identity. But, it turns out, the money came from a member of Israel’s Steinmetz family, which built a fortune as one of the world’s leading diamond traders.
A former Israeli Health Minister is set to be prosecuted for interfering in the Malka Leifer case by attempting to prevent her extradition to Australia.
Ms Leifer, 54, fronted the Melbourne Magistrates Court earlier this month and is facing 74 charges of child sex abuse, including multiple counts of rape, indecent assault and sexual penetration of a child.
She is accused of abusing three sisters – Dassi Erlich, Nicole Meyer and Elly Sapper – during her time as headmistress of Adass Israel School in Elsternwick between 2001 and 2008.
Israeli media is now reporting the former health minister Yaakov Litzman will be prosecuted for trying to prevent Ms Leifer from being extradited to Australia to face justice.
The Israeli police fraud unit has been investigating Mr Litzman for several months after it was alleged he pressured psychiatrists to state Ms Leifer was unfit to stand trial in Australia while the extradition case was ongoing.
Gov Cuomo signs bill repealing legal immunity granted to New York nursing homes during pandemic as he faces probe into hundreds of excess deaths at care facilities
Effective immediately, nursing homes and other healthcare facilities can be held civilly and criminally liable for treatment of individuals with COVID-19
The bill was sponsored and championed by Cuomo critics including Sen. Alessandra Biaggi
However, Cuomo himself has faced calls to resign amid probes into whether the state mishandled nursing home deaths related to the pandemic
The Cuomo administration has faced accusations that the state miscounted hundreds of nursing home deaths as hospital deaths
Lawmakers had already rolled back some of the protections that had been granted to healthcare workers last year
Queens assemblyman and advocates rally for nursing homes investigation and immunity repeal
“Every time we get close to the truth, it seems like the governor is untouchable. How many more scandals? How many more women? How many more nursing home-related lies and frauds need to be exposed before we can hold him accountable?” Kim said during a virtual rally with advocates on Thursday, April 1.
This week, Arizona legislators will vote on bill 1377, which would shield nursing homes from civil liability for negligence while providing services during the Covid-19 pandemic.
At least 32 states have already passed laws or issued executive orders during the pandemic making it harder for nursing home residents or their families to take the companies that run these facilities to court. The new Arizona bill would protect any health care institution assumed to be acting in “good faith” except in cases of “willful misconduct” or “gross negligence.”
The provision of such broad immunity is particularly problematic for nursing homes in light of growing evidence indicating that during the pandemic, nursing home residents have suffered considerable harms from neglect and prolonged isolation, in addition to the risk of Covid-19 itself.
In a report published last week, Human Rights Watch documented serious concerns over possible neglect in nursing homes across the United States during the pandemic’s first year, when staffing was low and family members were often not allowed in facilities. Residents, family members, and staff reported extreme weight loss, dehydration, and infected bedsores, which in some cases may have contributed to death. In many cases, residents’ hygiene appeared to have been neglected as well, with family members reporting residents were left in soiled incontinence pads for hours at a time and their hair and fingernails grew long and dirty. Many nursing home residents, deprived of daily social contact because of restrictions on visitors and activities, declined physically and emotionally.
The academic evidence echoes our findings: just last week, an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association (JAMDA) found that in Connecticut nursing homes, depression, substantial weight loss, and incontinence increased among residents in the four months after visitor restrictions went into place.
Human Rights Watch, to continue reading click here.
New York City Councilman Chaim Deutsch councilman will have to pay restitution for unpaid taxes. PHOTO: WILLIAM ALATRISTE/NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL
Posted to Lost Messiah 4.,28.21
For those of us who have been looking closely at Councilman Deutsch and his activities as a representative of the City council (both good and bad) in our opinion, it behooves the government to scrutinize Councilman Deutsch’s activities. One may want to look at the favoritism given, nay offered up, to certain people and communities. The same investigation that led to the guilty plea of Counselman Deutsch should not end here. It may be wise to start looking at each and every person with whom Councilman Deutsch did business, interacted, engaged with at clandestine meetings, and the resulting action on the part of the councilman. – LOSTMESSIAH
A New York City councilman pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to a misdemeanor tax-fraud charge for filing fraudulent information on income and expenses tied to his real-estate-management business, prosecutors said Thursday.
Chaim Deutsch, a Democrat who represents parts of Brooklyn, failed to pay $82,000 in taxes owed to the federal government between 2013 and 2015, according to a criminal complaint. Prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York said he also falsely claimed personal expenses as business expenses.
Mr. Deutsch, 52 years old, was first elected in 2014 and for part of his time in office he was the sole owner of Chasa Management Inc., a real-estate-management business, prosecutors said.
The councilman faces up to a year in prison and will have to pay restitution for unpaid taxes, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
The Wall Street Journal, to continue reading click here.
THE CITY Sues the Department of Education to Get Brooklyn Yeshiva Investigation Documents
THE CITY filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the city Department of Education after the agency refused to provide documents related to its investigation of the content and quality of instruction at Jewish religious schools in Brooklyn.
The DOE launched its probe of the yeshivas in mid-2015 in response to complaints from former students and advocates connected to the group Yaffed, who alleged that little to no instruction in subjects such as English and math was being provided at roughly three dozen Orthodox schools.
In August 2018, after advocates accused the city and Mayor Bill de Blasio of slow-walking the probe, then-Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza wrote a letter to the state Education Department revealing that 15 of 28 yeshivas at the heart of the investigation had refused entry to DOE officials.
State guidelines requiring that education at private schools be “substantially equivalent” to instruction at public schools governed the inquiry, even as those standards have been shifting in recent years.
It wasn’t until December 2019 that Carranza confirmed officials had visited 28 yeshivas, which he identified in a follow-up letter to state education officials, and revealed summary findings without specifying the conditions uncovered at each school.
The investigation found that just two of the yeshivas visited by the DOE could prove they provided “substantially equivalent” instruction to their public school counterparts.
Five of the 28 schools were described as providing an “underdeveloped” level of learning, including some showing “no evidence that English is consistently used as a language of instruction,” according to the update provided to SED.
DOE Excuse Flunks ‘Smell Test’Carranza wrote that his agency was sending a letter to each of the 28 schools “communicating the information, observations, and findings specific to each school.” THE CITY requested copies of those letters under the state’s Freedom of Information Law on Jan. 2, 2020.
More than 10 months later, on Nov. 16, 2020, the DOE provided two of the 28 letters — regarding the schools where instruction was deemed substantially equivalent. Officials denied access to the remaining 26 on the basis that sharing them would “interfere with ongoing law enforcement investigations.”
A month later, THE CITY filed an administrative appeal with the DOE. City education officials denied the appeal on Dec. 28, 2020 — again arguing that the investigation was ongoing and that release of the letters would interfere with the probe.
LOSTMESSIAH 