A group of four nursing homes could face permanent closure if approval for a pending sale is denied. The facilities’ owners have already found a buyer as part of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, but the transaction could be undermined by a string of financial and legal troubles faced by those facilities, and several others that operate under the same ownership.

The sale to Cedarhurst, NY-based provider WeCare Centers needs approval from a US Bankruptcy Court judge before any deal can proceed. 

The troubled Pittsburgh-area nursing homes are owned by LME Family Holdings, which itself is 100% owned by the Lahasky Family Trust — which is tied to controversial nursing home owner Ephram “Mordy” Lahasky.

The facilities owe more than $31 million in unpaid rent to their landlord and yearly assessment fees to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, according to reporting in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. They lost a total of nearly $10 million in 2023 alone.

The quartet of nursing homes are also among the 15 Lahasky-owned facilities currently facing allegations from the US Department of Labor that they failed to pay $20 million of overtime wages to 6,000 employees.

One of the four facilities also was convicted in December of falsifying records, which could result in the facility being permanently barred from participating in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Such a decision would almost certainly force its closure.

Contact information for Lahasky and LME Family Holdings was not readily available Wednesday. Attorneys for the facilities under DOJ investigation claim that only $7.5 million in back pay is owed, according to the Post-Gazette. 

WeCare did not respond to McKnight’s Long-Term Care News request for comment Wednesday. 

A hearing on the sale is scheduled for July 1 in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

Nine other Lahasky-owned facilities are scheduled to be sold for more than $50 million as part of the Chapter 11 reorganization. In September of last year, federal regulators sought to halt that sale — citing worries that Lahasky had connections to the buyer and could profit from the sale.

Lahasky has also been sued in the past by state regulators in New York over allegedly fraudulent related-party transactions.