How Bob Dean raided nursing home bank accounts while residents suffered after Hurricane Ida

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For Bob Dean, 2021 was the year to cash in.

He’d fueled a lavish lifestyle for years through some of the most poorly rated nursing homes in Louisiana, and now Dean was in line to seal a $70 million sale of his remaining seven homes.

But the sale – like some of Dean’s patients – became a casualty of Hurricane Ida.

After watching 843 of his residents suffer following their evacuation to an ill-equipped warehouse without enough toilets, showers or air conditioning, state health officials shut it down and began moving patients elsewhere.

Dean acted quickly to salvage what he could of his crumbling empire, ordering that his nursing home bank accounts be swept clean of millions of dollars.

While his residents and their relatives spoke out about losing loved ones and recounted the horrors of the warehouse, Dean went on a spending spree of nearly $2 million for firearms, antiques, a luxury car, paydays for family members and more.

Those allegations figure prominently in a lawsuit the U.S. Department of Justice filed last week that says Dean misspent $4 million in money earmarked for four of his nursing homes with federally insured loans.

In the years before the storm, the lawsuit says, Dean simply pocketed more than $1 million that his nursing homes had paid in “rent” for the warehouse, instead of using it to prepare for an influx of elderly and disabled residents.

Under the conditions of the loans, Dean was to spend any assets and income from his nursing homes on improvements to those homes, and he couldn’t withdraw money from some of those accounts without approval from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the suit said.

The suit seeks double the $4 million that the feds say Dean misspent. While they’ve filed a civil action against him in Louisiana’s Middle District, some say the allegations could turn into federal criminal charges as well.

Shaun Clarke, a former federal prosecutor in New Orleans, pointed to the rent payments Dean allegedly pocketed, and his alleged emptying of nursing home accounts after the state and his lender moved in to stop him.

Clarke said that “either of these sets of allegations would support wire fraud, health care fraud, false statements to a federal agency and money laundering charges” if proven. Dean’s insistent messages to his reluctant bookkeeper, included in the suit, could bolster the case, he said.

Dean is already facing state criminal charges for cruelty to the infirm and Medicaid fraud, to which he has pleaded not guilty. Attorney General Jeff Landry’s office is handling that case.

The feds’ lawsuit comes after hundreds of others took aim at Dean’s remaining fortunes and came up mostly empty.

A Jefferson Parish judge recently signed off on a plan to split $12.5 million in insurance proceeds among Dean’s former nursing home residents, likely giving about $10,000 per person, though the distributions have not begun yet.

His lawyers have argued in court filings that Dean suffers from dementia and is $40 million in debt, with nothing left to tap.

Don Massey, an attorney who represented many of Dean’s former nursing-home residents, said the government would be first in line to recover money from Dean. Banks and creditors would follow, and nursing home residents are at the back of the line.

Massey said the competing claims underscore how little money is available for victims of Dean’s evacuation.

It’s unclear which attorneys will represent Dean in the federal case: the attorney who represented Dean in the class action suit is not involved, he said.

Nursing homes flagged as deficient

Dean’s HUD deals go back to an agreement he signed in 2013 for two homes named Maison DeVille, one in Harvey and one in Houma. HUD’s mortgage insurance required that he keep the homes in good condition and keep all necessary licenses.

Dean signed two similar agreements in 2017 for Maison Orleans and West Jefferson Health Care Center.

But long before Dean evacuated his residents to the former pesticide plant-turned-evacuation-warehouse in Tangipahoa Parish – which he purchased in 2015 for $918,000 – his residents lived in poor conditions.

On a five-star rating scale used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, most of Dean’s homes received a single star. West Jefferson Health Care Center was the lone exception, with two stars, still below average.

Dean’s residents were prescribed unusually high rates of antipsychotic medications, and the homes they lived in had dangerously low staffing levels. Data gathered by ProPublica shows that Dean’s nursing homes typically had 35 citations from inspectors – nearly three times as many as a typical nursing home in Louisiana and twice the national average.

Meanwhile, Dean made a habit of lining his pockets with money that could have gone toward improving his homes, or that could have helped prepare the warehouse, the complaint states. He pocketed most of the $1 million plus that he required the nursing homes to pay in “rent” for the evacuation site between 2016 and 2021, according to the feds.

The main improvements to the warehouse consisted of ripping out metal shelves and adding a few showers, the suit states.

Dean lost licenses after disastrous evacuation

After Ida struck, Dean’s residents were forced to live in squalor in the warehouse, which his staffers on site tried to make clear to him. Some residents were using buckets as makeshift toilets; others were crying out for help on deflated air mattresses.

When Dean checked in with a key staff member, Donise Boscareno, who was overseeing the warehouse’s operations on Aug. 30, 2021, she responded, “It is not well. We can not do this. People are dying. We need to send them somewhere they can be cared for medically.”

Dean told her to calm down and ordered her not to let any patients leave the building unless there was a life-or-death situation. He worried his residents would flee to other nursing homes.

“Dean was crystal clear that he prioritized the health of his business over the health of his residents,” DOJ lawyers wrote in their complaint.

By Sept. 2, the Louisiana Department of Health had removed all of Dean’s residents from the warehouse over his objections.

LDH revoked Dean’s nursing home licenses Sept. 7, which created a plethora of problems for him. Having a valid license was one of the conditions of his agreements with HUD. Without one, his mortgage lender could wrest control of the nursing home’s bank accounts.

That’s what happened: Dean received notice that same day that his lender, Capital Funding Group, was taking control of those accounts. The lender had sole legal authority to access them from that point onward, the suit states.

“Dean was irate when he learned that the sale of his nursing home and his massive payday had fallen through,” the DOJ complaint alleges. “Dean instructed his bookkeeper every day—yelling and screaming—that his nursing homes’ money needed to be moved.”

Despite warnings, Dean ordered ‘sweep the accounts’

Dean discovered that not all of his access to his accounts had been cut off. His bank was also still allowing him to access “shadow operating accounts” for his nursing homes, though doing so violated his agreements with the federal government, according to DOJ.

He pressed his bookkeeper to “sweep all the accounts.” On Sept. 10, Dean’s bookkeeper transferred more than $365,000 from Maison DeVille in Houma and $330,000 from Maison DeVille in Harvey to Dean’s personal accounts.

Dean’s lender sent him another notice on Sept. 13 that he was in default on his mortgage and could no longer access his accounts.

Over the next week, his bookkeeper transferred more than $180,000 from nursing home accounts to Dean’s personal accounts. In total, Dean drained more than $877,000 from nursing home accounts subject to federal restrictions.

Dean spent it quickly. On Sept. 24, he shelled out $1.75 million at an auction house for antique firearms. Then in October, he dropped $100,000 at a Ford dealership and doled out allowances and cash gifts to his wife and stepchildren, according to the feds.

Meanwhile, Dean borrowed from nursing home reserves in early September 2021 to make the homes’ mortgage payments. HUD allowed him to tap the reserves on the condition that he’d repay it by the end of 2021. He never did.

“While pilfering [nursing home funds] to buy guns, antiques, and a car, and to pay personal loans and family allowances, Dean did not pay bills associated with his nursing homes after Hurricane Ida,” the DOJ complaint states.

At the time, Dean was spiraling into dementia, his attorneys later argued to keep him from having to sit for sworn testimony. A later diagnosis prompted a judge in Georgia, where Dean lives, to place control of his affairs with his wife last year.



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