Braemoor Health Center is a modest nursing home in Brockton, licensed to care for 120 residents. But Larry Lipschutz, who owns the property, was able to wring $1.8 million in pay out of it last year, according to state records. His son, Avi “Zisha” Lipschutz, who holds the state license to run the nursing home, extracted nearly $900,000 from Braemoor as payments to a realty company and four management firms he owns. As the owners were taking all this money out of Braemoor, Braemoor racked up 3-1/2 times as many health and safety problems as the state average, federal documents show.
The Boston Globe reports:
Braemoor Health Center is a modest nursing home in Brockton, licensed to care for 120 residents. But Larry Lipschutz, who owns the property, was able to wring $1.8 million in pay out of it last year, according to state records. His son, Avi “Zisha” Lipschutz, who holds the state license to run the nursing home, extracted nearly $900,000 from Braemoor as payments to a realty company and four management firms he owns.
As the owners were taking hundreds of thousands of dollars out of Braemoor, the nursing home racked up three and a half times as many health and safety problems as the state average, federal documents show.
Over the past year, a portrait has emerged of substandard care in many of the nursing homes run by Braemoor’s owner, Synergy Health Centers. Poor treatment of patients’ festering pressure sores. Medication errors. Inadequate staff training.
Now, a Globe investigation shows that as father and son were paying themselves handsomely, Synergy apparently provided false information when applying for nursing home licenses. The Globe’s review also found that Synergy and its affiliated companies assembled a string of 11 nursing homes with little state scrutiny of the backgrounds of top executives, including Larry Lipschutz, who faces tens of thousands of dollars in fines because of previous business dealings.…
Consider Larry Lipschutz. He owns the Braemoor property and is part owner of eight other properties that house Synergy nursing homes in Massachusetts, but he does not hold the operating licenses.
If regulators had been required to check his background, they might have discovered an arrest and tens of thousands of dollars in fines related to a tumble-down apartment complex called Branch Brook Gardens he owned in Belleville, N.J.
Lipschutz, a native New Yorker, bought the 22-building development in 1993, and over the next decade ran the once-coveted property into the ground, said New Jersey state Assemblyman Ralph Caputo, who helped tenants lobby for repairs.
“There were broken windows, flooded areas, rats. It was unbelievable,” Caputo said.
State inspectors found roughly 1,400 violations during a March 2004 inspection, according to New Jersey regulators. Local inspectors were citing him, too, with little success in getting repairs or persuading him to show up for court hearings, said Belleville Police Chief Joseph Rotonda.
Local officials finally sought an arrest warrant for the outstanding violations. Lipschutz pleaded guilty in municipal court in November 2004 to local code violations, was fined $935, and still owes Belleville $726.50, according to court documents.
At the same time, state regulators levied $49,369 in fines and fees against Lipschutz but offered to cut that in half if he fixed his buildings. Lipschutz has paid just $3,000 and failed to address the problems, according to New Jersey Department of Community Affairs records.
He sold the complex in March 2005 for $40 million, property records show.…
Lipschutz owns a home assessed at $1.1 million in Monsey, N.Y., and a $1.4 million condo in a luxury high-rise in Miami Beach, according to property records. He did not return phone calls and could not be reached at his New York home.…
Lipschutz owns a home assessed at $1.1 million in Monsey, N.Y., and a $1.4 million condo in a luxury high-rise in Miami Beach, according to property records. He did not return phone calls and could not be reached at his New York home.…
While Larry Lipschutz is listed as the sole owner of the Braemoor property and co-owner of many of the Synergy properties, it’s his 32-year-old son, Zisha, and Dov Newmark, 35, who hold the operating licenses for the Massachusetts nursing homes. They are Synergy’s cofounders.…
[Some of Newmark’s resumé doesn’t appear to pan out. But] Newmark’s resume also lists him as director of reimbursements and compliance at Concord Healthcare & Rehabilitation Center in Lakewood, N.J., and Tuvya Blumenkrantz, business manager there, confirmed Newmark filled that position from January 2009 until summer 2012.…
Newmark’s resume also lists him as director of reimbursements and compliance at Concord Healthcare & Rehabilitation Center in Lakewood, N.J., and Tuvya Blumenkrantz, business manager there, confirmed Newmark filled that position from January 2009 until summer 2012.…
This was just a small excerpt from a much larger investigative report, which you can read on the Boston Globe’s website here.