Nursing Home Cheating Residents Out Of Medicare Millions

FBI.gov, Dec 23, 2005

Melville Borne Jr. lived in the lap of luxury. He divided his time between two homes in Louisiana, one of which was a $4 million, 150-acre riverside estate known as Annedelle Gardens (shown above), with a refurbished historic plantation, man-made ponds, exotic swans, and a staff that included two full-time groundskeepers. His main residence -- in an exclusive, gated community near New Orleans -- was no shack, either.

How did he finance these extravagances? He cheated elderly patients in the three nursing homes he owned.

They suffered:

Grossly inadequate staffing
Threadbare bed linens
Broken air conditioning
Shortages of such basics as soap, bandages and towels
Limited food supplies
Broken washing machines
Critical therapeutic equipment that rarely worked
Limited social services or activities

That's because instead of using the millions of dollars in money he received from Medicare and Medicaid to run his nursing homes, Borne was diverting it to pay the mortgage and other costs at Annedelle Gardens, as well as the expenses of both a development company and a construction company he owned -- in addition to paying himself a generous salary of over $250,000 a year.