Nursing home felon pleads guilty to fleecing elderly man
West Mifflin woman stole $322K from him
When Martha Bell was before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge David R. Cashman a decade ago for involuntary manslaughter and other crimes in operating her nursing home, the judge scolded her at sentencing for being “blinded by money.”
He was even less happy with her Thursday, when the 71-year-old defendant, now in a wheelchair with handcuffed, trembling hands while wearing a red Allegheny County Jail outfit, admitted her guilt to stealing from an elderly man.
Making a statement about her plea agreement, Bell tried to offer regret for swindling the man in his 80s out of $322,000 soon after her prior release from prison. The judge was livid when she said she wanted to “do right by the judicial system” in repaying the money.
“That would be a first,” Judge Cashman snapped. “What didn’t you understand about the terms of your probation? Were you ... just out to fleece any body and everybody?”
The judge nonetheless accepted the agreement between Bell’s
attorney and the Allegheny County District Attorney’s office that dropped two counts of deceptive or fraudulent business practices against Bell. She admitted to theft by deception and receiving stolen property, with the 13 months served in jail since her arrest to count toward her agreed-upon sentence of six to 12 months imprisonment. She was also placed on probation for nine years and 10 years, concurrently, for the two crimes.
Bell, of West Mifflin, will face another day of reckoning with Judge Cashman, however, as she must appear before him again on charges of violating probation from the earlier case. She will remain in jail until then.
Bell was imprisoned from 2007 to 2013 after being convicted of federal and state crimes tied to operation of the Ronald Reagan Atrium I Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Robinson, which advertised itself as specializing in Alzheimer’s care.
Bell, a former nurse, was the founder and administrator of the 170-bed facility, where an elderly patient died in an outdoor courtyard in the middle of the night in 2001 when no one noticed she was missing. The state forced shutdown of the home in 2004 due to that and numerous other problems, and Bell was accused of enriching herself with her salary to run Atrium and its nonprofit parent corporation.
She was convicted of involuntary manslaughter among various state charges in that case and also served time in federal prison for health care fraud and other violations.
After her release in 2013, she sought out Richard Chatak of Mt. Lebanon, who testified at a preliminary hearing a year ago that he trusted her because they had a mutual friend, only to lose the money he had saved for retirement.
“She lied to me,” he said. “I’m sorry I ever talked to her. I’m sorry I met her.”
Investigators found that Mr. Chatak, who suffered injuries in a fall this year and died Sept. 18 at age 90, wrote out 33 checks totaling $322,000 in 2015 to Bell. He did so based on her business proposition that she could use the funds to help obtain $3 million for them through nursing home bed licenses she controlled and state nursing home funds she was entitled to.
The scheme was fraudulent, according to prosecutors, and Bell used the money for personal purposes such as ATM withdrawals at casinos, shopping, and tax and restitution payments.
Bell’s attorney, Ken Fryncko Jr., said after Thursday’s hearing that the fact that Bell must still face the judge for a parole violation weighed on her decision to admit guilt and avoid trial. She was not to have anything to do with nursing homes again as part of her prior sentencing.
“He’s known Ms. Bell for a long time,” Mr. Fryncko said of Judge Cashman. “When they’re supervising someone, they want things to go well.”
As part of the plea agreement, Bell has signed over her life insurance policy to Mr. Chatak’s estate and put the estate into her will as beneficiary of her house and other assets as needed to meet the $322,000 she stole.