An Illinois woman is suing a nursing home and two former employees for allegedly selling her house against her wishes — then paying her only $2,000 for it.
Colleen Allen is suing St. Anthony’s Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Rock Island, its former business office manager Staci Redman, its former social services director Tamsin Ramirez and Ramirez’s husband, Rick Rhoads.
In court documents, Allen says she was “deceived” while a resident. She said the social services director said that she “had to sign the forms because she had to sell her residence in order to stay on Medicaid.”
Allen, who has bipolar disorder and congestive heart failure, still lives at the nursing home. She maintains she did not want to sell her house and later learned that Rhoads had sold it for $95,000.
No criminal charges have been filed, but WQAD reports Ramirez and Redman were both fired from the nursing home.
The Illinois Department of Public Health fined St. Anthony’s $2,200 for “allowing financial abuse,” the television station reported.
A call from McKnight’s requesting comment from St. Anthony’s went unanswered Friday evening.
But The Quad City Times reported that Administrator Jeff Wollum said in November that the center had re-trained employees in “patient treatment” and added new financial misappropriation language to its staff rules.
Allen’s civil lawsuit alleges financial exploitation of an elderly person and says Rhoads, Ramirez, and Redman “intentionally and maliciously pursued a course of conduct in bad faith for the purpose of obtaining profit from Ms. Allen’s property”.
Allen is seeking damages in excess of $50,000. A hearing is scheduled for July.
