June 3, 2025 – 60 Seconds with Steve: For Sale
Transcript
From the title of this, I am sure you thought I was going to talk about some seniors housing community or company for sale. But no, unfortunately, I am talking about the Oval Office being for sale, and it is disgusting.
Although he is not the only President to pardon criminals and tax cheats, there seems to be more of a pattern with Donald J. Trump, as it pertains to our industry. It started in his first term when he commuted the 15-year sentence of Jon Harder, the founder and CEO of Sunwest Management, who in the 1990s and 2000s built up a huge portfolio of seniors housing communities, overpaying for most of them along the way.
But it all came crumbling down when his lenders decided to cut him loose. He gave the industry a bad name and was sentenced to prison, but on the last day of his first term, President Trump commuted Harder’s 15-year sentence. Prosecutors called his case the largest investment fraud in the history of Oregon. We suppose Trump liked the fact that lenders were screwed, something he knows a lot about.
In 2020, Trump also commuted the 20-year prison sentence of Philip Esformes, who owned a portfolio of nursing homes in Florida but was convicted of a $1.3 billion Medicare fraud scheme. Maybe this is the waste and fraud Trump is talking about getting rid of. Yeah, right.
The latest horrible decision is the recent pardon of Paul Walczak, another Florida senior care facility owner who pleaded guilty and was convicted of stealing $10.9 million of tax withholdings from his employees for his personal use. The pardon came within a few weeks of his mother, Elizabeth Fago, allegedly dropping $1 million for a seat at a fundraiser dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Fago is a former nursing home operator and one-time senior care broker in Florida. But hey, probably just a coincidence, right?
Joe Biden did his share as well, including granting clemency to the former CEO of American Senior Communities who was convicted of a $19.4 million fraud scheme. It is this kind of sleaze that gives senior care a bad name, even though it is a very small minority of people involved.
This was common in the nursing home industry in New York in the 1970s and 1980s, but there is just no place for it now (there never was). And it is the sleaze of money-grubbing presidents that should offend all of us. Afterall, we are all taxpayers, and these fraudsters, whether cheating Medicaid and Medicare, or stealing tax withholdings, should pay for their crimes. Who’s next to get off, Skyline Health’s Joseph Schwartz? Give me a break.
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