{"id":941,"date":"2024-01-15T02:50:25","date_gmt":"2024-01-15T02:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/?page_id=941"},"modified":"2024-01-15T03:14:19","modified_gmt":"2024-01-15T03:14:19","slug":"criminal-justice_detail_6","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/?page_id=941","title":{"rendered":"CRIMINAL JUSTICE_DETAIL_6"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\">CRIMINAL JUSTICE<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\"><strong>NOVEMBER+DECEMBER 2023 ISSUE<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Donald Trump Freed a Convicted Medicare Fraudster. The Justice Department Wants Him Back.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>To dozens of questions in her father\u2019s civil fraud trial, the heiress drew a blank.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>CHRIS POMORSKI<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"321\" height=\"180\" src=\"http:\/\/aiecasia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/486_ESFORMES_2000.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-613\" style=\"width:760px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/486_ESFORMES_2000.webp 321w, https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/486_ESFORMES_2000-300x168.webp 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 321px) 100vw, 321px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p><strong>On a Thursday<\/strong>\u00a0in September 2019, Philip Esformes arrived for his sentencing at the federal courthouse in downtown Miami looking pale and gaunt. The previous April, after an eight-week trial, Esformes, heir to a large, successful chain of nursing homes, had been\u00a0convicted\u00a0of fraud, kickback and money laundering crimes, and obstruction of justice. Citing more than $1 billion in false reimbursement claims, prosecutors\u00a0described him\u00a0as the linchpin of the \u201clargest single criminal health care fraud case ever brought against individuals by the Department of Justice.\u201d Esformes, then 50, had been in jail since his\u00a0arrest\u00a0more than three years earlier. The deep tan he ordinarily cultivated had faded. He\u2019d developed skin rashes and shed some 50 pounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>His father, Morris, an Orthodox rabbi, philanthropist, and founder of the family business, was notably absent, but the courtroom gallery was filled with other relatives, friends, and associates, some of whom had benefited from the family\u2019s charitable giving. Several addressed the court, attesting to the defendant\u2019s decency and asking for leniency. At the appointed moment, Philip, who\u2019d remained silent throughout his trial, rose to speak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI want to talk from the heart to tell you the hard lessons I have learned,\u201d\u00a0he said. Through tears, he apologized to his family. \u201cI stand before you a humbled and broken man\u2026I have lost everything.\u201d Referring to covert recordings played at his trial, Esformes continued, \u201cThe tapes depict me as a man willing to cut corners without fear of consequences, unappreciative of all the good that surrounded me, a man who acted as if the rules do not apply.\u201d Now, he said, \u201cI accept responsibility for what I have done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was a striking departure from the defense\u2019s closing arguments that March, wherein one of his lawyers had compared Esformes to Tom Robinson, the Black man falsely accused of rape in&nbsp;<em>To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em>. Yet Esformes went on to project a sense of victimhood. Behind bars, he\u2019d been threatened and had witnessed terrible violence, he said. At night, \u201cthe inmates begin to shout, swear through the vents and the toilets, throw things against the walls.\u201d He was sometimes prevented from speaking to his family or bathing regularly. \u201cI haven\u2019t felt the sun,\u201d he said. \u201cI have no control over any aspect of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Witnesses at the trial had detailed conditions at Esformes\u2019 nursing facilities not dissimilar to those he was describing, but if he perceived the irony, he didn\u2019t acknowledge it. Nor, Judge Robert Scola observed, did the defendant take full ownership of his crimes. His apologies were vague, seemingly crafted to preserve his ability to deny guilt on appeal. \u201cI don\u2019t know what he was accepting responsibility for,\u201d Scola remarked, and, as such, Esformes would be ineligible for a reduced sentence. The judge\u00a0gave him\u00a020 years in prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By the time Esformes was indicted, he and his father had spent decades dodging a steady stream of\u00a0lawsuits,\u00a0criminal investigations, and\u00a0regulatory inquiries. Court documents and testimony, together with dozens of interviews with experts and associates of the Esformeses, offer a vivid tale of how Morris and Philip, by exploiting the perverse incentives of the health care system, had managed to turn society\u2019s failure to ensure proper care for the elderly, the mentally ill, the addicted, and the unhoused into an engine of enormous profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Again and again, Morris and Philip used loopholes and payoffs to escape serious consequences for alleged wrongdoing. Even a prison sentence didn\u2019t mark the end of their lucky streak. Amid Philip\u2019s prosecution, Morris donated $65,000 to the Aleph Institute, a Jewish criminal justice nonprofit with ties to Jared Kushner, and whose founder, Rabbi Sholom Lipskar, was on hand for the sentencing. Morris\u2019 philanthropy more broadly appears to have paved the way for a decidedly unorthodox clemency grant from none other than President Donald Trump, who commuted Philip\u2019s sentence shortly before leaving office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, Justice Department officials, in an unorthodox move of their own, have decided to\u00a0retry Esformes\u00a0on outstanding charges, setting up a postclemency showdown that may well be unique in the annals of American jurisprudence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>When Philip Esformes<\/strong>\u00a0was young, his father used to talk about building an empire. Wiry, with angular features and heavy eyebrows, Morris was witty and fiercely intelligent. An old friend from Chicago, Harry Maryles,\u00a0remembers\u00a0him as \u201cone of the coolest guys in the Yeshiva.\u201d Morris married, and after being ordained as a rabbi, he took a job at a Hebrew day school. Philip, the first of his three children, was born in 1968. To help support the family\u2014and with a loan from his parents, according to Maryles\u2014Morris bought his first nursing home the following year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then, as now, the nursing home industry was dominated by for-profit operators. It was also expanding, bolstered by longer life expectancies and payments from Medicare and Medicaid, which were introduced in 1965. Nursing home capacity nearly\u00a0doubled\u00a0between 1966 and 1973; by 1980, the federal government was spending almost\u00a0$21 billion a year\u00a0subsidizing facilities. (As of 2021, roughly 14 million Americans were receiving some form of long-term care.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the absence of strong oversight, the reimbursement bonanza was accompanied by rampant patient abuse and neglect\u2014the subject of multiple congressional hearings. But federal regulation remained vague and ineffectual; inspections to ensure proper staffing, safety, and quality of care were\u2014and largely still are\u2014left to state agencies<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By the late \u201990s, Morris was among the most successful nursing home owners in Chicago, with additional facilities in Missouri and Florida. Decades of federal incentives had resulted in a glut of nursing home beds in Illinois and elsewhere, but Morris insulated himself. During the 1980s, with state psychiatric hospitals shutting down in response to President Ronald Reagan\u2019s spending cuts for mental illness, Morris flung open his doors. States, in turn, received federal money for the psych patients they were able to place in nursing homes. Morris \u201cwould have regular meetings with the Illinois Department of Mental Health,\u201d Alan Litwiller, the former chief nursing home inspector for Northern Illinois, told me. \u201cHe would say, \u2018An empty bed in a nursing home makes no money. How many residents can you give me?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By 2013, roughly\u00a0one-quarter\u00a0of new nursing home residents nationwide had been diagnosed with a mental illness. \u201cStates have relieved themselves of long-term care for the mentally ill,\u201d said Beatrice Coulter, a veteran psychiatric nurse and co-founder of the group Advocates for Ethical Mental Health Treatment. \u201cWhere there\u2019s a vacuum, something will fill it. And that\u2019s what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Morris filled hundreds of beds this way. He and a business partner, Leon Shlofrock, together housed more psychiatric patients than anyone else in Illinois; Morris would eventually even come to employ \u201cbed brokers\u201d to trawl shelters and soup kitchens for potential residents. \u201cThere is a vacancy issue out there,\u201d\u00a0he explained\u00a0to a journalist in 1998. \u201cAnd people are fighting for patients.\u201d To help maintain a hospitable business climate, Shlofrock founded a lobbying group for which Morris served as vice president. The two men doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to lawmakers and candidates. In return, they got access to the halls of power. \u201cIt\u2019s almost impossible not to make money,\u201d\u00a0Shlofrock told\u00a0one reporter, \u201cunless you\u2019re a total and complete idiot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As he grew wealthy, Morris remained in the modest home he shared with his family in suburban Lincolnwood. He owned hundreds of tailored suits but favored gym clothes, and his vices were pedestrian: the&nbsp;<em>Sun-Times&nbsp;<\/em>sports section, Crown Royal whisky, cigarettes. He spread his riches around, ultimately giving out more than $122 million, largely to Jewish causes. His grandparents had emigrated from Salo\u00adnika, a Greek city whose once-vibrant Jewish community was largely effaced by the Nazi occupation, and Morris harbored a deep sense of communal peril. Jewish schools, hospitals, and community centers in the United States and Israel benefited from his largesse. A professorship at the University of Chicago and a Jewish museum in Alaska, among other things, came to bear the family name. The Esformeses \u201cbuilt the Chicago Jewish community and infrastructure into what it is today,\u201d noted a family friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Israel, Morris befriended eminent Jewish scholars. \u201cThey recognized him as a true servant of Torah,\u201d another friend, a rabbi, said, \u201cawaiting orders to be fulfilled without question.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But Morris\u2019 reputation was challenged in 1998, when the\u00a0<em>Chicago Tribune<\/em>\u00a0ran\u00a0a series\u00a0questioning his business practices. Unlike most nursing home residents, many of the psych patients Morris recruited into his facilities were not elderly, the\u00a0<em>Tribune<\/em>\u00a0reported. Some were men and women in their 30s and 40s who struggled with addiction. Housing younger patients in nursing homes isn\u2019t illegal, but Morris\u2019 homes were often understaffed and generally unequipped for psychiatric care. One of his facilities, the\u00a0Sovereign Home, erupted in chaos after several men were transferred there from a shelter and began menacing employees and accosting neighbors. Another, Emerald Park Health Care Center, was beset by neglect. \u201cThe majority of homes with the greatest number of mentally ill patients consistently fail to provide adequate treatment for psychiatric disorders or provide clean facilities,\u201d\u00a0one article noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The state opened an inquiry, but Morris was by then used to tangling with investigators. He\u2019d been run out of\u00a0Kansas\u2014unfairly, in his view\u2014after a home he owned there failed inspections. In 1982, the FBI had investigated him for\u00a0allegedly bribing\u00a0a state lawmaker to help him escape charges involving the death of a patient from infected bedsores. Woody Enderson, a former FBI agent who worked the bribery case, told me his investigation also surfaced evidence that Morris had billed Medicaid for services that were unnecessary or fictitious. But such charges are difficult to prove and require jurors to parse technical medical records and testimony. The prosecution was abandoned. Subsequent state and federal investigations into four heat-related deaths at an Esformes facility in Missouri also failed to bring indictments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2009,&nbsp;<em>Tribune&nbsp;<\/em>reporters David Jackson and Gary Marx set out to determine what had changed since their paper\u2019s series a decade earlier. Not only were the Esformes facilities still taking in surplus psychiatric patients, they found, but Morris was now also warehousing large numbers of former convicts. This arrangement, combined with inadequate staffing, resulted in dozens of assaults and the fatal bludgeoning of an elderly man in a wheelchair. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t like he could stand up and protect himself,\u201d the victim\u2019s sister said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Deep into their reporting process, Jackson\u00ad\u00ad and Marx landed a sit-down interview with Morris at his office in Lincolnwood. Morris loved&nbsp;<em>The Godfather<\/em>, once even having his car horn customized to play the film\u2019s theme. In person, he channeled a Jewish Don Corleone. \u201cHe was an enormously powerful figure,\u201d Jackson told me. \u201cConstantly, a secretary would come in with a message for him or a phone call. It was clear that he was not just funding synagogues and schools, but helping individual people in a way that was dramatic.\u201d Morris was dressed for the interview in a purple-and-gold Lakers uniform and matching yarmulke. \u201cThere was something clownish about him,\u201d Jackson recalled, but also frightening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Morris complained to the reporters that the\u00a0<em>Tribune<\/em>\u2019s coverage was unfair and anti-\u00adSemitic. \u201cHe said, \u2018You can\u2019t be Jewish if you are asking me these questions,\u2019\u201d recalled Marx, who is Jewish. \u201cHe believed that he could do no wrong.\u201d He also let it be known that he had the ear of a powerful Chicago alderman, Ed Burke, who has since been indicted on federal racketeering and extortion charges. Morris \u201cwas an extremely manipulative person,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cHe was trying to poke his way into the journalism to see how he could influence it, change it, or stop it.\u201d In subsequent conversations, Morris told Marx and Jackson that a council of rabbis in Israel had preemptively absolved him of spiritual consequences should any harm befall the reporters. Fed up with the unwelcome attention, he said, he would divest from Chicago and focus on his interests in Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Philip Esformes often<\/strong>&nbsp;rose before dawn to exercise. As an overweight child, he\u2019d enjoyed acting out the final fight scene from&nbsp;<em>Rocky II<\/em>, always playing the underdog while casting a playmate as the defeated Apollo Creed. By his senior year of high school, Esformes was captain of the basketball team. He\u2019d grown up tall and handsome, with olive skin, a flashing smile, and the simpering manner of a man acutely aware of his good looks. He attended business school in New York and then returned to Chicago, where he helped launch and later sell a hospice and a rehab company before committing himself to the family business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the mid-\u201990s, Morris began buying up skilled nursing and assisted living facilities in and around Miami that would eventually be co-owned by his son; they also acquired an ownership interest in a small area hospital. Philip took charge of the family\u2019s Miami operations. In 2001, seeking to expand his access to ancillary providers of prescription drugs, lab services, and medical equipment, he formed a business alliance with Nursing Unlimited, a home health company co-owned by three young men: Nelson Salazar, Gui\u00adllermo (Willy) Delgado, and Willy\u2019s kid brother, Gabriel (Gaby) Delgado.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gaby grew close to Esformes; he became Philip\u2019s wingman, driving him between the family\u2019s Miami properties, which came to include seven skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) and 10 assisted living facilities (ALFs). Esformes had multiple cell phones and would sometimes conduct several conversations at once. As Gaby later testified, the calls revolved around keeping his beds filled. Every day, he listened as Esformes recorded census numbers for each facility, often repeating them aloud like a Bingo host: \u201c<em>288, 60, 15<\/em>.\u201d He then frequently called his father with the latest figures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>\u201cWe are banging up all these Medicare numbers, running them like credit cards\u2026And I\u2019m kicking back to Phil.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some numbers were more important than others. Assisted living facilities house residents who need help with basics like meals, dressing, and bathing. They cannot provide medical services, and as such are not covered by Medicare, and only partially by Medicaid at low rates. Skilled nursing facilities, on the other hand, offer short-term rehabilitation and physical therapy for people recovering from serious illness, injury, or hospitalization. Patients tend to be older and relatively immobile: stroke victims undergoing speech therapy, people with wounds that require expert nursing care, recipients of knee and hip replacements regaining the ability to walk again. Most of Esformes\u2019 SNF patients were covered by Medicare at rates of up to about $800 per day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An occupied skilled nursing bed can be quite profitable, but the eligibility rules are strict. A new patient must have been hospitalized for at least 72 hours within the previous 30 days, and a doctor must certify that their condition warrants placement. Patients who fail to make progress, or who deteriorate, must be discharged. And Medicare only covers skilled nursing treatment for up to 100 consecutive days. SNFs are often units within larger nursing homes, so patients who need 24-hour care after their SNF benefit lapses often end up as long-term residents of the same facility, at a far lower reimbursement rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even in Florida, with its large elderly population, only so many patients are eligible for skilled nursing at a given time. Dr. \u00adRoberto Del Cristo, who worked for Esformes during the 2000s, estimated that SNFs in Miami were 85 to 90 percent full on average. But Esformes wanted his facilities running at 100 percent capacity. In this the Delgados proved valuable partners. Large, fun-loving men, they excelled at drumming up referrals from ethically flexible physicians and assisted living owners. They would pick up the check for parties at high-end restaurants and nightclubs and even invite sex workers to entertain doctors at Willy\u2019s condo in Coconut Grove. \u201cWe were hustlers,\u201d Willy later testified. \u201cI was the master at the orgies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Their social connections greased the skids. \u201cPhil would tell me, \u2018Hey, Gabs, if anybody you can get from the ALFs you deal with,\u2019\u201d Gaby recalled, \u201c\u2018and the doctors you know, if they could refer me a patient, we will take care of them.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In an echo of Morris\u2019 Chicago operations, many of the patients recruited to boost \u00adEsformes\u2019 census numbers in Florida\u2014a state whose spending on mental health care is among the nation\u2019s lowest\u2014were relatively young and living with psychiatric disorders and addiction. To justify their admission, court records show, unscrupulous doctors deployed a common set of descriptions, exaggerated or wholly fictitious: unsteady gait, weakness, muscle wasting. \u201cWhat I would do is\u2026embellish,\u201d Del Cristo later testified. \u201cIf the patient had pain in his shoulder, doesn\u2019t mean that it was dislocated\u201d (an injury that, if severe, might justify admission). \u201cBut instead of giving him medicines, I prescribed physical therapy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The commingling of these patients, whom SNF staffers called \u201cwalkie-talkies,\u201d with frail seniors gave some employees pause. \u201cWe could have the 35-, 45-, 49-year-old men on very heavy psych drugs put into a room with an elderly patient that is \u00adbedbound,\u201d Ada Maxine Ginarte, a former nurse at an Esformes skilled nursing facility, testified. These men often were visibly disturbed and could be intimidating, even to medical professionals, she added. \u201cYou could have them walking around among the little ladies in their wheelchairs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Court records and testimony cast light on other aspects of the operations as well. As payment for his dubious referrals, Del Cristo received access to a pool of Esformes patients for whom he could then bill insurers, earning about $100,000 extra per year. Other doctors\u2014and assisted living owners\u2014took cash kickbacks from Esformes\u2019 lieutenants. Nursing Unlimited\u2019s relationship with Esformes was similarly tainted. Salazar and the Delgados paid \u00adEsformes for access to hundreds of assisted living residents and would then bill Medicare for unnecessary equipment and services, including diabetes care, intravenous injections, and mobility devices. \u201cWe are banging up all these Medicare numbers, running them like credit cards,\u201d Gaby testified. \u201cAnd I\u2019m kicking back to Phil.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Larkin Community Hospital, in which the Esformeses owned a stake, played a crucial role, often hosting the 72-hour stays that made patients eligible for SNF reimbursement. Esformes also employed \u201cmarketers\u201d who found physicians at other hospitals who were willing to play ball. As before, society\u2019s failings offered a sheen of legitimacy. \u201cThey took very difficult patients,\u201d explained Julia Capote, who worked in social services at a Miami Beach hospital prior to taking a job with Esformes. \u201cYou are calling all these places to help you place patients. They don\u2019t want them\u2014and you need to get the patient out as fast as possible. And then you call somebody who is willing to help you, and that is really good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Within the Esformes network, patients were fungible. After exhausting Medicare\u2019s 100-day skilled nursing maximum, they were frequently transferred to one of Esformes\u2019 assisted living homes, where, after 60 days, they became eligible for another round of skilled nursing. \u201cIt\u2019s a fairly closed system,\u201d Del Cristo testified. Billing at the highest rates possible was Esformes\u2019 priority. Court documents show how he pressured his employees to find more patients whose needs were covered by Medicare\u2014a practice he called \u201cbuilding skill.\u201d In one exchange with an admissions coordinator, Esformes texted \u201cbuild skill\u201d three times in four minutes. \u201cTime to move,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some staffers looked askance at the questionable SNF admissions and at co-workers who were hustling to grow the census. \u201cYour nasty admissions person is gonna continue to not listen to me &amp; bring in criminals!!\u201d one nursing director texted Esformes. \u201c<em>De madre<\/em>Philip!\u201d Stephen Sugar, an SNF administrator, messaged his boss regarding two patients Esformes didn\u2019t want discharged: \u201cI can get mds to write rx for additional therapy but the therapists will fight it.\u201d Frequently, Esformes demanded outright that his employees scare up patients: \u201cGet more,\u201d he ordered a beleaguered admissions director in 2015. \u201cDo what I say.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><br>Soon after taking<\/strong>&nbsp;over in Miami, Esformes and his wife, Sherri, bought a large home on North Bay Road, in an exclusive Miami Beach neighborhood. They purchased the adjacent property as a guest residence and office for their house manager, overseer of gardens, private chef, and housekeepers. A third house nearby was converted into a training facility with a gym and basketball court for their kids. They also had homes in Chicago and Los Angeles, and Esformes\u2019 cars included a LaFerrari Aperta with a sticker price of $1.65 million. Like his father, Philip was a philanthropist, but even when he gave quietly, it bore a trace of ego. \u201cGiving charity is close to being angel-like,\u201d he told a friend. \u201cGiving charity anonymously is close to being godlike.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Esformes resisted Miami\u2019s most illicit temptations at first, steering clear of the Delgados\u2019 orgies. \u201cPhilip did not engage,\u201d Del Cristo, a regular, testified. \u201cHe was a hardworking, religious gentleman who was very family-oriented.\u201d By 2014, though, he was having affairs, often with young models. Gaby took Philip\u2019s kids Jet Skiing and arranged his boss\u2019s liaisons, booking suites at the Ritz-Carlton and the Mandarin Oriental and visiting the rooms in advance to set the thermostat to Esformes\u2019 preferences and lay in a supply of his favorite teas. \u201cI knew all his intimate things,\u201d testified&nbsp;Gaby, who proffered his own credit card for incidentals\u2014charges included a $786 spa treatment for a former&nbsp;<em>Playboy<\/em>&nbsp;<em>Venezuela<\/em>&nbsp;cover model\u2014and sometimes paid the women, too.Philip would exhort Gaby to open new relationships with laboratories, psychiatrists, home health agencies, and equipment providers: \u201cGet in your A game!\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These and myriad other payments were all part of a complex web of financial relationships connecting Esformes, the Delgados, and dozens of outside health care operators and hangers-on. To increase billings, as the prosecutors demonstrated at trial, the Delgados created new companies that peddled items like hospital beds and suction pumps. The kickbacks grew in kind; for roughly a decade, Gaby estimated, he delivered Esformes about $20,000 a month in cash, often wrapped in Publix bags. The Delgados also arranged pay-to-play access to his assisted living facilities for several pharmacies. Esformes, Gaby testified, would exhort him to open new relationships with laboratories, psychiatrists, home health agencies, and equipment providers; \u201cGet in your A game!\u201d he would say.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The illicit payments were disguised using doctored invoices and phony leases and consulting agreements. The Esformeses also conducted business through dozens of nested shell corporations, which allowed them to obscure their financial interests and write off payments for rent or staff that were in fact going to other family\u00ad-owned LLCs. This engineered complexity, a common practice in the elder care business, allows its lobbyists to use the appearance of meager profits to push for minimal staffing and hefty government reimbursements. (The industry\u2019s true profitability is reflected in its private equity investment\u2014some $10 billion\u00a0today.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As their crime network expanded, Gaby and his partners increasingly served as a protective layer between Esformes and the vendors paying kickbacks\u2014of which \u00adSalazar and the Delgados enjoyed a cut. To a certain kind of Miami health care operator, Gaby\u2019s fixer role was common knowledge. \u201cEverybody knew in the street,\u201d Willy explained, \u201cif you wanted to provide any services for [Philip], you had to meet with my brother.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Among the firms<\/strong>&nbsp;doing business with Esformes was American Therapeutic Corporation, which ran partial hospitalization programs across Florida. Partial hospitalization is an alternative to inpatient treatment, providing half-day courses of therapy for people with severe depression, mental illness, and addiction. ATC\u2019s business model was not dissimilar to that of Esformes. Owners Lawrence Duran and Marianella Valera sourced patients from hundreds of halfway houses and assisted living facilities\u2014including Esformes\u2019\u2014and maintained a kickbacks budget of some $350,000 per month, Valera would later testify. Payments to Esformes were funneled through Salazar, who held a no-show job with ATC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most of the patients at ATC\u2019s facilities were too impaired to be good candidates for partial hospitalization, which requires that participants be sober and fully oriented, capable of meaningfully participating in therapy. Some had dementia or psychosis. Others were actively using drugs. And even within this population, the patients Esformes sent over stood out. They appeared so neglected, Valera said, that her staff brought in clothing for them. \u201cThey haven\u2019t been bathed on a regular basis,\u201d she recalled. \u201cSome of them came high to the facility.\u201dOceanside warehoused neglected long-term residents and younger patients with mental illness: \u201cI couldn\u2019t get drunk enough not to hear the screaming, yelling, smell diapers on the floor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Esformes\u2019 patients drew attention elsewhere, too\u2014especially the ones from Oceanside Extended Care, a dingy SNF with unreliable elevators and a poor, troubled patient population. In testimony, Borinquen Hall, a homelessness liaison for the Miami Beach police, recalled encountering Oceanside patients at a nearby bus stop, \u201cgetting high, drinking, causing havoc.\u201d He added, \u201cA lot of times, we didn\u2019t think they were patients in Ocean\u00adside because they seemed homeless.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One such patient was Robert Dingman, now 53, who arrived in Miami Beach in 2007, unhoused, alcoholic, and addicted to crack. When the street grew unbearable, he learned what to say to get himself admitted to a hospital. \u201cThen I would be sent to a shelter for a period of time,\u201d he recalled. Oceanside was ideal. \u201cIt was a good spot for a homeless person,\u201d said Dingman, who got sober in 2015. \u201cMy drinking and drugging weren\u2019t hindered there.\u201d After a brief physical therapy session each morning\u2014during which \u201cI had to move my ankle back and forth\u201d\u2014he walked to the beach, where he and other patients took turns panhandling and drinking. The facility itself was hellish, a warehouse of neglected long-term residents and younger patients with mental illness who got little treatment beyond antipsychotic drugs. \u201cI couldn\u2019t get drunk enough not to hear the screaming, yelling, smell diapers on the floor,\u201d Dingman recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie Jones described a similar experience. Now 47, Jones has bipolar disorder and has been addicted to opioids. She, too, stayed in Esformes\u2019 facilities to escape homelessness. In court, when a lawyer showed her the long list of services billed in her name at Oceanside and elsewhere, she was flabbergasted. \u201cI remember very clearly what they did,\u201d Jones said. \u201cAnd it was not all these things that they are saying they did.\u201d At Superior Living, another Esformes ALF, she testified, staffers bribed her and other residents with opioids to get them to stay. \u201cThere were many different kinds of people thrown together,\u201d a former staffer at a different Esformes assisted living facility told me, from teens to octogenarians with dementia: \u201cWe had a client that should have been in a locked facility\u201d and was known to torture and kill stray cats that prowled the grounds. In 2016, another resident wandered off and was found drowned in a canal.\u201cYou have a pipeline into nursing facilities because there is nowhere else to send these individuals\u2026mental health professionals, we normalize that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This wasn\u2019t an isolated incident. In 2013, an elderly patient at Esformes\u2019 South Dade Nursing and Rehabilitation Center was beaten to death by his mentally ill 41-year-old roommate. A second drowning, of 75-year-old Coleman Felts, occurred two years later at another Esformes skilled nursing facility. Local reporting in Florida and Missouri, and court records in Illinois, show that families filed more than two dozen wrongful death complaints against facilities owned by Philip and his father. (Most were settled without any admission of wrongdoing.) Some of their nursing homes were at the bottom of the federal government\u2019s rankings, with long rap sheets of violations. But the state imposed no meaningful consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Florida\u2019s Agency for Health Care Administration has treated nursing home owners with striking deference. Between 2013 and 2018, according to an investigation by the&nbsp;<em>Naples<\/em>&nbsp;<em>Daily News<\/em>, 46 of Florida\u2019s worst homes faced lawsuits related to mistreatment or neglect that led to at least 191 deaths. The state closed only two facilities during that period. The feds have not fared much better. The Nursing Home Reform Act of 1987 mandated in-depth, unannounced \u201cquality surveys\u201d of nursing facilities roughly once a year. Based in part on these surprise inspections, the industry improved in some areas, like reducing the use of physical restraints, which can cause pressure ulcers. But the inspection process is widely considered inadequate; that Covid resulted in the deaths of more than 150,000 residents surprised no one who had been paying attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In September, the Biden administration announced its intention to beef up enforcement of the existing rules and proposed a battery of new ones, including stricter staffing requirements, stronger safety standards and penalties, and greater oversight of the industry\u2019s creative accounting practices. But fierce resistance by the industry and the long-standing reluctance of regulators to hold facility owners accountable hardly inspires confidence. \u201cYou have a pipeline into nursing facilities because there is nowhere else to send these individuals,\u201d nurse and patient advocate Coulter told me. \u201cThere isn\u2019t a big uprising because no one\u2019s gonna fund what needs to happen,\u201d she added. \u201cAmong mental health professionals, we normalize that. We don\u2019t have any other choice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Amid this Wild West atmosphere, South Florida stands out as ground zero for health care fraud. \u201cNot only perpetrated by independent, scattered groups,\u201d a special agent from the Department of Health and Human Services\u2019 Office of the Inspector General told\u00a0NBC News\u00a0in 2011, \u201cbut also by competitive, organized businesses complete with hierarchies and opportunities for advancement.\u201d A Miami-based federal prosecutor uninvolved with the Esformes case recently told me that health care fraud in Florida \u201chas replaced cocaine trafficking as the crime du jour.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Gaby Delgado awoke<\/strong>&nbsp;to pounding on his front door in the wee hours of May 12, 2014. He\u2019d been on edge for some time. In 2011, 20 people associated with American Therapeutic Corporation were arrested and charged in a $200 million Medicare fraud case. The next year, Jose Carlos \u00adMorales, a pharmacy owner and associate of the Delgados in several schemes, pleaded guilty in a separate fraud case and ultimately got a 14-year sentence. In March 2014, Salazar was visited by inquisitive FBI agents and hadn\u2019t been himself since. Gaby and Willy suspected, correctly, that Salazar was wearing a wire and cooperating against them. Still, Gaby\u2019s first thought that morning was that someone was breaking in, and he reached for his gun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Outside, he saw a cluster of cruisers illuminated by blue and red lights. \u201cGaby, we are here for you,\u201d a cop on his front step informed him, \u201cand we\u2019re doing the same thing at your brother\u2019s house.\u201d The jig was up. The Delgados were indicted for receiving kickbacks, money laundering, and conspiracy to commit health care fraud. A superseding indictment charged Willy with opioid trafficking, significantly increasing his potential sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The brothers saw themselves as honorable crooks who would never cooperate with the feds. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be a rat,\u201d Gaby later testified. After they were released on bail, he went to see Esformes. To prove he wasn\u2019t wired, Gaby undressed in front of him, and they talked in Esformes\u2019 pool. \u201cPhil\u2019s telling me, \u2018I got your back, man. Just stay firm, and we are going to get through this,\u2019\u201d he recalled. \u201cPhilip had always told us that he had always an ace up his sleeve,\u201d Willy said. \u201cHe told me one day that he had connections to make things go away.\u201dEsformes suggested to Willy he should flee the country and alter his appearance with plastic surgery; Gaby could then use an \u201cempty chair\u201d defense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There was reason to take the claim seriously. Philip and Morris had demonstrated a knack for getting out of tight spots. Ten years earlier, for $15.4 million and without admission of wrongdoing, they\u2019d\u00a0settled a civil fraud\u00a0case brought by the Justice Department in relation to the revolving door between Larkin Community Hospital and their skilled nursing facilities. (The Esformeses sold their interest in Larkin soon thereafter but continued sending and receiving patients to and from there.) Philip was also implicated as a co-conspirator during the 2009 federal criminal trial of a Chicago facility owner convicted of participating in a bribery and kickback conspiracy\u2014but he was never charged. A lawyer who deposed both Esformeses in one of several additional cases that were dropped or settled told me that they seemed to consider themselves \u201cuntouchable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But as the Delgados\u2019 September 2015 trial approached, Philip clearly perceived the brothers as a threat. Court documents show he pressured them to sign affidavits swearing they\u2019d never done anything illegal with him and to fire their lawyers in favor of a defense team of his choosing. He suggested to Willy that he should flee the country and alter his appearance with plastic surgery; Gaby could then use an \u201cempty chair\u201d defense at trial, blaming everything on his absent brother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Delgados actually thought about it, but Willy was reluctant. He had been married more than 20 years and had two daughters; Gaby, too, had a wife and kids. Their parents were elderly and frail, and their lawyers were talking to the government about a plea deal. Then, sometime that May, \u00adEsformes said something that brought everything into focus. If he were in their position, he told the Delgados, he would kill himself. \u201cI was at a loss for words,\u201d Gaby recalled. He and Willy, born in Puerto Rico, had seven other siblings. They\u2019d come to the mainland as young children and grew up in a Miami that was then one of the nation\u2019s poorest cities. Such a comment from a man of inherited wealth and privilege drove home the imbalance in their relationship. \u201cThis guy won\u2019t hold any heat for me,\u201d Gaby realized. \u201cThis guy gets confronted, he\u2019s going to fucking talk like a canary.\u201d He and Willy decided to cut a deal with the feds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Philip Esformes was arrested in July 2016 and charged with health care fraud, paying and receiving kickbacks, and money laundering, among other crimes. His trial, which began in Miami three years later, included dramatic testimony from the Delgados and from Jerome Allen, the former coach of the University of Pennsylvania men\u2019s basketball team, who said Esformes had paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars to ensure his eldest son\u2019s admission. (Evidence showed that Esformes also paid at least $400,000 to Rick Singer, ringmaster of the Varsity Blues admissions scandal, to get his daughter into the University of Southern California as a phony soccer recruit.) At one point, Scola, otherwise forbearant and good-humored, felt compelled to caution Esformes\u2019 71-year-old mother for staring down witnesses. He later ejected her from the courtroom.\u201cSetting aside nefarious intent, nursing home operators will behave in whatever way the system incentivizes them to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the trial, Esformes\u2019 defense team tried to claim that his operations met urgent social needs. \u201cThe United States government does not provide health care,\u201d his lawyer Roy Black told the jury. \u201cThey\u2019ve created a system run by businessmen who take over a health system they do not want to provide.\u201d The defense also suggested that the way Esformes cycled through patients was altogether legal. \u201cI want to make sure that we are clear that doctors referring patients to a nursing home and a nursing home assigning patients to a doctor\u2014that symbiotic relationship, cross-referrals\u2014that is not a kickback,\u201d argued Howard Srebnick, another Esformes lawyer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nor, his lawyers argued, did this referral system depart entirely from the norm. In 2021, roughly\u00a040 percent\u00a0of hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries were discharged to a rehab facility, where they often deteriorated and were subsequently readmitted to a hospital. Dr. Sarguni Singh, who researches geriatric care at University of Colorado Hospital, told me that, like the psychiatric patients in Esformes\u2019 SNFs, many seriously ill elders who end up in nursing homes are unlikely to make the rehabilitative gains they hope for. What\u2019s more, the government reimbursement structure encourages facility owners to send long-term patients to the hospital for minor issues, knowing they will likely return to the skilled nursing unit at a far higher reimbursement rate. The cycling of patients can result in harmful losses of physical and mental dexterity. \u201cIn many cases, there\u2019s no clinical need for the patient to be in the nursing home, but it\u2019s the default,\u201d Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute focused on health care policy, told me.\u00a0Singh added, \u201cSetting aside nefarious intent, nursing home operators will behave in whatever way the system incentivizes them to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A lawyer who represents whistleblowers in health care cases offered an even less generous view: \u201cIf you are honest and not taking kickbacks, it is hard to make a go of it, because Medicaid does not pay enough,\u201d the lawyer told me. \u201cUsually if they are making it, they have all kinds of side deals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The timing of<\/strong>&nbsp;Esformes\u2019 conviction, in April 2019, proved serendipitous. Federal clemency grants are normally the result of a slow, tightly controlled process in which the Justice Department plays a large role. Past presidents have sometimes deviated from standard operating procedure, notably by pardoning Richard Nixon (Gerald Ford) and the disgraced financier Marc Rich (Bill Clinton). But Trump went further in dispensing with the process. \u201cIt was a free-for-all,\u201d said attorney Sam Morison, who specializes in federal executive clemency. Trump\u2019s pardons and commutations, not surprisingly, overwhelmingly favored the wealthy and well connected. They included his disgraced former campaign chair, Paul Manafort, who\u2019d committed bank and tax fraud; adviser Roger Stone, convicted of lying to Congress, witness tampering, and obstruction; Judith Negron, who got 35 years for her role at American Therapeutic Corporation; and Jared Kushner\u2019s father, Charles, who\u2019d served time for tax evasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kushner, an Orthodox Jew, was closely involved in Trump\u2019s clemency decisions. So was the Aleph Institute, the group that received $65,000 from Morris after his son\u2019s arrest, and to which Kushner has ties. Kushner\u2019s wife, Ivanka Trump, spoke in 2016 at founder Lipskar\u2019s Shul of Bal Harbour, near Miami, and Lipskar attended a December 2019 Hanukkah ceremony at the White House. \u201cOf the 238 total pardons and commutations granted by Mr. Trump during his term, 27 went to people supported by Aleph, Tzedek [another Jewish organization], and the lawyers and lobbyists who worked with them,\u201d the\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>\u00a0reported. Celebrity lawyer and Trump ally Alan Dershowitz, who has volunteered with the group, told the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>\u00a0that Aleph advocated extensively for Esformes\u2019 release. An Aleph spokesperson told\u00a0<em>Mother Jones<\/em>\u00a0that the group has returned Morris\u2019 donations, which it claims were unrelated to its advocacy. (Esformes did not respond to questions submitted for this story via a family representative.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In any case, Trump\u00a0commuted\u00a0Esformes\u2019 sentence and ordered his release in December 2020\u2014though the conviction remained intact, as did a $44.2 million restitution and forfeiture order. (Court filings put Philip\u2019s net assets at $78 million.) A White House statement said the commutation was supported by former Republican attorneys general John Ashcroft and Edwin Meese and that Esformes had \u201cbeen devoted to prayer and repentance\u201d since his 2016 arrest.\u00a0He was sprung just in time to attend his daughter\u2019s New Year\u2019s Eve wedding at his Miami Beach mansion, where guests in formal attire danced beneath a disco ball in the backyard. The nuptials were officiated by Aleph\u2019s Lipskar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The clemency decision was \u201ca kick in the teeth,\u201d Paul Pelletier, a former federal prosecutor who supervised the early stages of the Esformes investigation,\u00a0told the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>. \u201cIt sends the wrong message to crooks,\u201d Pelletier, now in private practice, told me. \u201cYou make enough money, you can fucking buy your way out of jail. I find it appalling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So did Esformes\u2019 prosecutors. But they appear to have found a work-around. Although the jury convicted him on more than two dozen charges, they weren\u2019t able to reach a verdict on a handful of others, including perhaps the most significant original count: conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud. The hung charges might have seemed like a victory for Esformes, but the double-jeopardy principle that protects defendants from re-prosecution only applies to charges for which jurors have rendered a verdict. Blessed with a second chance, the Justice Department promptly signaled its intent to try Esformes again. Though highly unusual, \u201cI think it\u2019s the right move,\u201d Pelletier said. \u201cI know how big the fraud was. And I know how important messaging is in stopping health care fraud. That\u2019s exactly what I would do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The revived prosecution angered Trump loyalists. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) depicted it as an attempt to undermine a grant of clemency. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.)\u00a0wrote\u00a0to Attorney General Merrick Garland, decrying \u201cyour selective, vindictive, and unconstitutional prosecution\u201d and the \u201cdangerous precedent\u201d it creates. It also drew criticism from less biased onlookers. Josie Duffy-Rice, a lawyer and former editor of the progressive legal news website\u00a0<em>The Appeal<\/em>, told me that even if the decision to re-prosecute is technically legal, in her view, it violates the spirit of executive clemency and risks setting an unsound precedent. \u201cIt immediately set off alarm bells as being completely outrageous and a pretty serious violation of important constitutional protections,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the Justice Department appears to be within its rights. Esformes has lost several appeals alleging prosecutorial misconduct, and in March, the Supreme Court declined to stay his prosecution. A hearing to determine the new Miami trial date was scheduled for November; Esformes\u2019 lawyers have petitioned the Supreme Court to hear his case instead, which could further draw out the timeline. (The Justice Department declined to comment.) \u201cI don\u2019t see it as a difficult question,\u201d said Morison, who spent 13 years as a staff lawyer at the federal Office of the Pardon Attorney. \u201cUnless these hung counts were expressly included within the scope of the [clemency] grant, they aren\u2019t covered.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>After Philip was<\/strong>&nbsp;arrested, Morris became more involved in day-to-day management of the Miami facilities. In a letter to the court, he wrote, \u201cI am questioning how the son I raised put himself in the position in which he now finds himself. As I followed his case, I was deeply disturbed by what I learned about my son\u2019s behavior. Philip had veered from the path that his family had paved for him.\u201d (Esformes and his wife divorced in 2020.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet it stretches credulity that the man after whom Esformes fashioned himself had no inkling of his son\u2019s crimes. An ongoing lawsuit against several Esformes-related entities,\u00a0filed in 2017 by Mario Gonzalez, a former longtime manager at an Esformes SNF in Florida, suggests that Morris was well aware of what was going on. When Gonzalez refused to unnecessarily extend skilled nursing therapy for several patients as ordered, the suit alleges, Morris had him demoted and transferred\u2014a tactic more aggressive than any that Philip appears to have applied. \u201cI think what motivated Philip,\u201d defense lawyer Srebnick said at the sentencing, \u201cis he wanted to prove to his father, living in the shadow of his father, that he could be successful, that he could run the facilities with no bed left empty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Morris died last December. He was 76. At his funeral, a procession of rabbis spoke with emotion about his deep religiosity and his support for Jewish communities. \u201cWhen a person comes into this world, we don\u2019t know what their life will be like,\u201d one said. \u201cBut when they leave this world and you can make an accounting of what they accomplished, that\u2019s a day of&nbsp;<em>simcha<\/em>[joy].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rebecca, Morris\u2019 elder daughter, spoke last, thanking siblings Philip and Rachel for caring for their father in his final days. She remembered Morris\u2019 devotion to family and how he always sent flowers. He loved Elvis, she said, Frank Sinatra\u2019s \u201cMy Way,\u201d and the old&nbsp;<em>Perry Mason<\/em>&nbsp;TV series, whose titular attorney defends clients wrongfully accused\u2014often by slow-witted agents of law enforcement. Morris once said that regulators treated him like \u201cwe are in Nazi \u00adGermany,\u201d and it is easy to imagine his affinity for Mason\u2019s clients, beset by unfounded charges but always vindicated at last. Up to a point in his own life, he\u2019d had comparable experiences. It was in part the reversals of fortune that he enjoyed, Rebecca recalled. \u201cHe would say, at the end of every episode, \u2018Now&nbsp;<em>that<\/em>&nbsp;I didn\u2019t see coming.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Morris may have gone to his grave believing in the rightness of his actions, and perhaps even taking pleasure in having had the chutzpah to evade his would-be punishers. One of his ultimate acts was to help secure the same kind of last-minute escape for his son that he\u2019d orchestrated many times for himself. But his family\u2019s story may yet contain a final reversal, in which Philip \u00adEsformes is at last called to account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>This article was supported by the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/economichardship.org\/\">Economic Hardship Reporting Project<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Donald Trump Freed a Convicted Medicare Fraudster. The Justice Department Wants Him Back. On a Thursday\u00a0in September 2019, Philip Esformes arrived for his sentencing at the federal courthouse in downtown Miami looking pale and gaunt. The previous April, after an eight-week trial, Esformes, heir to a large, successful chain of nursing homes, had been\u00a0convicted\u00a0of fraud,&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/?page_id=941\" class=\"\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">CRIMINAL JUSTICE_DETAIL_6<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":477,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"on","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_ti_tpc_template_sync":false,"_ti_tpc_template_id":"","footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/941"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=941"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":950,"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/941\/revisions\/950"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}