PIERCE TOWNSHIP, Ohio — It was supposed to be a 113-bed nursing home overlooking a pond on 12 acres of historic farmland in what is now Pierce Township.
But the Amelia Care Center never opened.
Crews stopped work in June 2020, leaving the structure frozen in mid-construction after court records show they stopped getting paid. Months later the owner of the nursing home company that was building it, Harold Sosna, pleaded guilty to bank fraud, admitting to a $59 million check-kiting scheme, and went to prison.
“It’s kind of a joke in town, everybody comes in and asks, what’s going on with the purple monster,” said Candice Davidson, who owns the Stone House Restaurant and Bar which overlooks the half-built facility wrapped in purple insulation.
Last month Pierce Township trustees declared it so unsafe and blighted, that it must be demolished. An official nuisance letter is fastened to a locked chain-link fence in front of the site.
“At this point what we’d like to see is this building taken down,” said Trustee Allen Freeman, who gave up hope that a new buyer would finish the nursing home. “Until that’s removed and we figure out a funding mechanism to get this piece of property sold, we’re kind of stuck.”
Who pays the $250,000 to $300,000 to tear down the structure and cart away the debris? That’s one of many questions looming over township officials.
“That’s a pretty hefty sum to pull out of our general fund,” said Freeman, who doesn’t think taxpayers should have to pay.
But a new subdivision of homes is being built next door, and Davidson and her husband, Matt, just opened a new restaurant with hopes for a good lunchtime crowd. They’d both like to see new development with entertainment spaces such as bookstores, coffee shops, more restaurants and retail.
“I’d rather it be torn down than be there like it is,” Matt Davidson said. “If we’re going to draw from outside of our little community, we need more than just a night of having dinner out. We need other things to do.”
Pierce Township inherited the problematic site in 2020 when it absorbed land that had been part of the Village of Amelia after residents voted to dissolve the hamlet. Before then, Amelia officials voted in 2019 to create an energy special improvement district and signed off on special energy assessments, allowing projects to be financed through bonds, to help the nursing home get built.
“We’re stuck with a mess,” Freeman said. “This beast was thrown in our laps. We had neither signed any of the papers nor been involved in any of the negotiations, yet here we are tasked with unwinding this mess.”
Pierce Township resolution on Pond View Drive building by WCPO 9 News on Scribd
Who is Harold Sosna?
Sosna, 69, is a well-known figure who created a nursing home empire.
He founded Blue Ash-based Premier Health Care Management in 1998 and grew the family business until it owned nine post-acute and long-term care facilities, including seven in the Cincinnati area.
But the business began to falter in 2017, due to a series of regulatory and economic conditions, and by 2019 the financial situation was dire. He took out high-interest loans from pay-day lenders, according to his court filings.
“The onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 was the last straw for the viability of Premier, and ultimately broke its financial back … Mr. Sosna made the tragic decision to use the ‘float’ at his business’ multiple banks. He chose to engage in the crime of check-kiting in an effort to extend the life of his doomed family business,” Sosna’s attorney, Stephen Stallings, wrote in a 2020 sentencing memorandum.
Check-kiting means that Sosna manipulated his bank balances to take advantage of the float. He wrote more than 200 checks over three days in May 2020, sending more than $118,000,000 through Pennsylavnia-based S&T Bank and First Financial Bank in Cincinnati, which prosecutors liken to getting money without properly secured loans.
“He cheated community banks in western Pennsylvania and Ohio of an astounding sum - $59 million. Sosna is responsible for the largest bank fraud scheme ever prosecuted in our district,” said then U.S. Attorney Stephen Kaufman, who led Sosna’s prosecution from the Western District of Pennsylvania, in an October 2021 press release.
Prosecutors asked U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Horan to sentence Sosna to as much as six years in prison. But she sentenced him to 42 months and ordered him to pay nearly $59 million in restitution to S&T Bank.
After he spent just over a year in prison, Sosna filed a motion last November for compassionate early release. He claimed to suffer from a variety of medical conditions, such as diabetes, that placed him at an increased risk from COVID-19 and flu-like ailments.
Prosecutors objected, arguing that he did not provide medical records to support his claims and that early release would undermine deterrence for other white-collar criminals.
“To date, Sosna has not made any restitution payments. Sosna’s vast sum of unpaid restitution strongly cuts against granting his release,” prosecutors wrote in Feb. 6 filing, objecting to his early release.
But the judge never got a chance to issue a ruling because the U.S. Bureau of Prisons made the decision. It allowed Sosna to transfer out of the Federal Correctional Institution in Morgantown, WV and return to Cincinnati, where he is currently either on house arrest or at a halfway house. His release date from federal custody is June 27.
Sosna declined an interview.
The Hamilton County Auditor’s website listed Sosna as the sole owner of a seven-bedroom house in Montgomery with a pool, tennis court, stone patio, greenhouse and a 7,000-square-foot basement. It is valued at $3.46 million.
His wife, Faye Sosna, transferred ownership of the home to him in April 2021, which is six months after he pleaded guiltybut several months before his sentencing hearing in October. They had jointly owned the home since 2003, according to court and auditor records.
Faye Sosna is listed as the current owner of a 5,141-square-foot condo in Aventura, FL according to the Miami-Dade County property appraiser website, which values the condo at $2.25 million.
The nursing homes
As Sosna’s scheme unraveled, he faced dozens of lawsuits, including some from local banks and creditors accusing him of breach of contract, unpaid rent and defaulting on loans.
Banks fought over the remaining money from some nursing home accounts in court.
Judges appointed receivers to sell his properties including, Beechwood Terrace, Kenwood Terrace Health Care Center, Ivy Woods Care Center, Madeira Health Care Center, Pleasant Ridge Care Center, and Southbrook Health Care Center in Springfield.
Other facilities — Forest Hills Care Center in Columbus, Wexford Care Center in Deer Park, and Social Row Transitional Care near Dayton – were also sold.
But one property is still awaiting a seller — the partially constructed nursing home in Pierce Township.
General Electric Credit Union sued Sosna and his related companies over an unpaid construction loan to build that nursing home, and won a nearly $10 million dollar judgment.
A judge appointed a receiver, Prodigy Properties in June 2020, but after years of trying to sell it, there is still no buyer.
“The property continues to be marketed for sale, but the receiver has not received any serious inquires,” according to a December 2022 report from Prodigy, which noted that it did not have funds in the account to pay for its own invoices. A $75,000 settlement from a buyer who backed out of a deal replenished that account, according to court filings.
A Hamilton County magistrate will decide if John Rothschild Jr. from the Newmark, Knight and Frank firm will take over as the new receiver for the Pierce Township property at an April 4 court hearing.
Attorneys for GE Credit Union and Prodigy did not respond to requests for comment.
Freeman plans to have direct talks with the credit union and Greenworks Lending LLC, which he described as an investor with a $2 million bond tied to the deed. Court filings confirm it has ties to the property.
“So even if you could convince the bank that holds this property to sell it to you for a dollar, you would immediately be on the hook for $2 million to pay that bond off,” said Freeman, who believes that debt is deterring buyers.
Freeman blames GE Credit Union for not maintaining the property and believes it should pay demolition costs.
“I don’t really feel that that is a good way to spend taxpayer dollars – to bail out a multi-billion-dollar bank that currently owns this property by default,” Freeman said. “It’s my preference that they would do the right thing … They own the property and at this point it is their responsibility to one, pay taxes on it which they’re not doing, and two, maintain it, which they’re not doing.
The Clermont County auditor's website shows the property owes more than $210,000 in delinquent taxes. The property is listed as being in the care of the receiver Prodigy Properties.
Sosna and his associated companies face nearly $31 million in judgments through the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas, from lawsuits filed mostly by banks.
Milford-based Centerbank won a $1.2 million judgment in its lawsuit against Sosna and his former company, Kenwood Envision, which is one of the largest tenants in the mixed-use development Kenwood Collection for a defaulted loan.
Kenwood Collection also won a $3.7 million judgment against Kenwood Envision for unpaid rent.
In 2021, a federal judge in Oregon ordered Sosna to pay First Interstate Bank of Montana $1.8 million. Sosna was sued, along with Sosco Aviation and Premier Health Care, for defaulting on a $5 million loan to buy a 2009 Cessna 560XL and two P&W Canada PW545C engines. The lawsuit accuses Sosna of failing to make payments beginning on July 20, 2020.
Against that backdrop, Freeman and other Pierce Township trustees must decide if taxpayers will front hundreds of thousands to demolish the crumbling nursing home that was Sosna’s last project before his arrest.
“We could tear it down ourselves and attach a lien against the property,” said Freeman. “But there are over 50 liens on this property already and we would be the last lien in. It’s likely that if the building were sold, that township residents and taxpayers wouldn’t get any satisfaction out of that.”
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