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| Suzanne Araneo at home in Keyport, which she found empty upon her return from a months-long stay at a nursing home, after sighing a power of attorney agreement to a Medicaid advisor who started selling off everything in her house, Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media |
By Ted Sherman
Suzanne Araneo’s memories were gone. And so was just about everything else.
After returning home last year following a months-long stay at Anchor Care & Rehabilitation in Hazlet, the 67-year-old retiree said she discovered her house in Keyport had been emptied.
Gone were her treasured family photo albums. So was a turquoise box with crystal rosary beads given to her by her parents when she was 7 years old. A collection of CDs and her jewelry were all missing. Her bank accounts had been cleared out.
Even her Christmas tree has been carted off, along with her clothing, her computer and stereo equipment, her bed and all her furniture — some of which she later discovered being sold through Facebook Marketplace. In fact, her small, two-bedroom house had been put up for sale as well.
“It was like a knife through my heart,” said Araneo, 67, recalling the scene when she returned. “There was not one single thing left.”
She had not been the victim of a random break-in.
According to a lawsuit filed in Superior Court in Monmouth County, she had been coerced while heavily medicated to sign what is known as a durable power of attorney agreement that essentially handed over total control of her life to someone she had never met.
The agreement gave Shmuel “Sam” Stern, who became Araneo’s “attorney-in-fact” the authority to collect monies owed on her behalf; to sell her property; conduct banking powers; manage her investments; borrow against her real estate and personal property; sell her car; conduct business in her name; prepare, file and sign tax returns on her behalf, access her safety deposit boxes, and sell any and all assets in her possession, according to the lawsuit. Stern also barred her from seeing or having any contact with family, her niece alleged.
The agreement also allowed him to use her assets to pay himself compensation, the filing claimed.
In fact, Araneo alleged that everything she owned was subsequently stolen, sold off or just thrown away in the trash, all without her knowledge or consent.
According to the lawsuit, at play was a financial scheme to force Araneo, against her will, to become a permanent, long-term resident of Anchor Care by stripping her of all of her assets and enabling her to qualify for Medicaid. In turn, Stern took all of her money and other assets, the lawsuit alleged.
“After my client told Anchor Care multiple times that she did not want to destitute herself and live in the nursing home, they stole her money from her bank account, sold her car, and even tried to sell her house,” said Araneo’s attorney, Deborah Gough of Hackensack, reiterating the claims made in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit charged that within days of signing that agreement all of Araneo’s possessions would be taken, liquidated or converted. Furniture was sold off, personal papers discarded and bank accounts raided.
How the money was spent remains unknown, although Araneo said none of it came back to her.
The complaint, which included accusations of false imprisonment, unjust enrichment, and breach of contract — as well as a violation of her rights as a nursing home resident — named Anchor Care, along with Stern. Also charged was Stern’s company, Future Care Consultants of Brooklyn and Lakewood, which according to its website provides financial and accounting services for nursing homes.
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| Attorney Deborah Gough, left, with her client Suzanne Araneo at home in Keyport. “What happened to my client is like a Category 5 hurricane that came without warning in a flash and swept her life away,” Gough said.Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media |
Anchor Care and its attorneys did not return calls or emails seeking comment. But the nursing home and its operators in their own filing in response to the complaint said there had been “no deviation from any applicable standard of care” in the case of Araneo, nor did they breach “any duty with respect to any care, treatment or services.”
Stern did not return messages left with his office. However, attorney, Richard J. Kozel of Clifton, who represents Stern and Future Care’s said his client’s involvement in the matter was “solely with regard to Medicaid eligibility for the long-term care that Ms. Araneo’s medical team believed she needed.”
In a statement, he said, “Thankfully, Ms. Araneo recovered and was able to leave the long-term care facility and return home,” adding that Future Care Consultants “had no involvement in Ms. Araneo’s medical care or treatment.”
‘THINGS GOT FOGGY’
According to the court filing, Araneo’s nightmare began after she became ill and entered Hackensack Meridian Health Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank for treatment of a number of medical issues, including hypomagnesemia and acute kidney failure.
Following an 11-day stay at the hospital, Araneo, who lives alone, was admitted to Anchor Care in February 2021 for what she expected to be a short-term period rehabilitation. She then had hoped to be discharged home not long afterward, the lawsuit stated.
During those first few weeks at the nursing home, Araneo said an Anchor Care employee “repeatedly suggested that she should destitute herself, enroll on Medicaid,” and move into the nursing home for the remainder of her life.
Medicaid serves as a safety net to help with medical costs, including nursing home care, for those with limited income and resources. But in New Jersey, one cannot have more than $2,000 in assets to qualify for the state and federal program. Under the rules, one also cannot have gross income — including Social Security or pension payouts — of more than $2,523 per month to receive Medicaid assistance.
That requires individuals with any sort of savings or assets to “spend down” their money on nursing care and other specifically allowed personal expenses, before they are eligible for Medicaid assistance.
At the time, Araneo said she was receiving Medicare benefits and supplemental insurance, and repeatedly told Anchor Care that had no interest in doing anything but returning home.
However, according to the lawsuit, she was soon placed on a number of psychiatric medications at the nursing home for treatment of anxiety and depression that, taken with other drugs that had been prescribed for neuropathy, frequently result in serious side effects — including dizziness, drowsiness, confusion, and difficulty concentrating.
“Things got foggy,” Araneo recalled in an interview. “It was almost like I was having hallucinations. Sometimes they were dreams and I thought they were real. I was under that fog until I left there.”
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| The cabinets were empty when Araneo finally returned home. Dishes, forks, knives were all gone, including all of her photo albums, furniture, clothing. Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media |
While in that “fog,” the lawsuit said she was presented with a durable power of attorney agreement in March of 2021, which she had no recollection of signing, naming Stern as her attorney-in-fact.
The complaint, though, argued that Araneo had not been mentally competent at the time to sign any legal agreement. It alleged that Stern and Anchor Care “knowingly and intentionally manipulated and took advantage” of her, getting her to sign a power of attorney agreement for the purpose of converting her assets to qualify for Medicaid and force her to become a long-term resident of the nursing home.
In their own court filings, Stern and Future Care denied any misconduct or liability.
While acknowledging that nursing home residents were indeed required to spend down their assets to obtain Medicaid benefits, the filing by Stern and Future Care refuted that there was any aim “to render patients destitute.”
The filing added that Araneo did in fact execute a general durable power of attorney with the full understanding of its terms and conditions being necessary in order to obtain Medicaid benefits.
And in a counter claim, they also charged that the allegations in Araneo’s complaint were made in bad faith and “for the sole purpose of attempting to otherwise threaten, intimidate and scare” Stern and Future Care to seek “undeserved monetary compensation.”
A FAMILY IN THE DARK
While Araneo was under the care of the nursing home, meanwhile, her niece, Rachel Paskitti, said she was blocked from any contact with her aunt.
The two had long been close, with Paskitti often traveling to New York with Araneo to catch shows on Broadway when she was much younger. Suddenly cut off from her aunt, she said she was not allowed to visit and unable to reach her by phone.
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| Araneo walks into her bedroom. After returning home, she slept for a time in her empty home on a donated couch.Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media |
When she tried calling, she said she was told her aunt did not want to speak with her. When she tried to visit, she was told any visit had to be scheduled through Stern, who she said would not allow it.
At the same time, she said she was unaware of what was happening at the house in Keyport.
Months after arriving at Anchor Care, Araneo left the nursing home for a second hospitalization in June of 2021, where she demanded to be allowed return home. It was then, she said, that she began to realize what had happened. According to the lawsuit, she was told on multiple occasions that she could not make decisions for herself and that she could not be discharged home from the hospital without the permission of Stern. Her brother then went to court seeking to obtain a guardianship, said the complaint.
Araneo was ultimately found competent in October and only then was she discharged. When she finally returned home, she said just about everything she owned was by was no longer there.
Pictures that had hung on the walls were gone, their absence noted by a shadow of sun-bleached paint or paneling faded by time. Her television set had been taken. So was her car. As was all the money in her bank accounts.
For a time, she lived day-to-day sleeping on a donated couch.
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| Rachel Paskitti in her aunt's home in 2014. Upon her return, she bought Araneo a new Christmas tree to replace the one taken from the house.Photo courtesy Suzanne Araneo |
Paskitti welcomed her aunt back home by getting her a new Christmas tree. Months later, the artificial tree remains in place in front of her fireplace, within a house that was taken off the market and has since been furnished by many donations.
VULNERABLE INDIVIDUALS
Issues of guardianship abuse have long been rife in the long-term care industry. A U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging in 2018 cited a number of incidents where “unscrupulous guardians acting with little oversight” used court proceedings to obtain control of “vulnerable individuals” and liquidated assets and savings for their own personal benefit.
At issue in Araneo’s case was not a court-appointed guardian, but rather of an individual ostensibly acting on her behalf as her “attorney-in-fact,” a legal route that is sometimes taken to avoid the possibility of guardianship.
But that, too, can be problematic.
“Unfortunately, there can be some very bad actors out there,” said Ann Kohler, New Jersey’s former Medicaid director and a retired national health care consultant.
Earlier this year, a New Mexico woman who held power of attorney for a nursing home resident in that state was sentenced to five years in prison after representing that funds belonging to the resident were being held in a Medicaid trust. Prosecutors said no such trust existed. Instead, she spent that money on trips, a car payment, spa visits, online dating, pet grooming, and other personal items.
In Pennsylvania, a 54-year-old woman was sentenced to two years of probation in May after pleading to theft charges involving $74,000 taken from the accounts of a 92-year-old woman she claimed to be her mother to obtain power of attorney. The victim had reportedly been under 24-hour care in a nursing home at the time, authorities said. None of the money was used for her care, prosecutors said.
And in Florida, the state’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit in May arrested a man who allegedly used a power-of-attorney agreement to steal $40,000 from an elderly victim residing in a Medicaid-receiving facility. Officials said the individual made multiple withdrawals from the victim’s bank account for personal use, including back-rent to a marina. The state Attorney General’s office said the money should have been spent on medical bills, property taxes and care for the victim.
There has so far been no accounting for how Araneo’s money was spent, or how much, if any, was applied toward the cost of her care while in the nursing home, her attorney said. But a person acting under a durable power of attorney has a fiduciary responsibility toward the individual who signed the agreement, said Reid Weisbord, a Rutgers Law School vice dean and law professor whose focus includes wealth transfer and elder law.
“The attorney-in-fact has to act in the best interest of the principal,” he explained. While a durable power of attorney agreement confers the power to act on behalf of someone, those decisions must still be evaluated from the perspective of that individual, he said.
Under such an agreement, for example, the attorney-in-fact could not exercise the power to take all that person’s money for personal use, unless there is language in the agreement that allowed it.
“It’s not in the normal action to give away everything to those who take care of you,” Weisbord observed.
Although he was not familiar with Araneo’s litigation, he said much will depend on how the proceeds were spent and whether the Stern had a financial relationship with the nursing home, which could constitute a conflict of interest. According to the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Stern is listed as an officer of Anchor Care.
Still, Weisbord said the argument could be made that what was being done was in Araneo’s best interest, if in fact the money was being spent on her own care.
The other question, though, said Andrea McDowell, a Seton Hall Law School professor who teachers elder law, is whether the power of attorney agreement was even valid.
If obtained when Araneo lacked the capacity to sign it, as she claims, then there would be a matter of whether it had been granted fraudulently, McDowell said, noting as well that Araneo’s signature would have had to be acknowledged before an attorney or notary, while adding that the witnesses to that agreement were employed by Anchor Care, according to the lawsuit.
“He owes her a duty of loyalty,” said McDowell of Sam Stern.
A HURRICANE
Today, Araneo’s home remains mostly empty.
Despite the donations, what she misses most are the things that cannot be replicated.
“If I could have all my pictures back, I could give a damn about everything else,” she said.
Gough, her attorney, said that Araneo trusted that Stern and the nursing home would help her in a time of ill health and great vulnerability, and that they betrayed that trust.
“What happened to my client is like a Category 5 hurricane that came without warning in a flash and swept her life away,” she said.
Life is the memories we make, she said.
“When
everything that you possess, that you have earned, that you have
created, and that gives your life meaning, is taken from you, then there
is no more you,” she said. “It’s devastating.”
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