I Beg Your Pardon part 4

I Beg Your Pardon part 4

From PRETEND by Creative Babble, LLC

April 7, 2026 · 26 min · Season 25 · Episode 12

About this episode

This episode explores the story of Joseph Schwartz and the nursing home empire he built, highlighting the neglect and fraud that led to his conviction and subsequent pardon.

Content Warning: This episode contains detailed descriptions of nursing home neglect, including accounts of residents found in unsanitary conditions. Listener discretion is advised. You're about to hear the story of a man who built a nursing home empire from a tiny office above a pizza parlor in New Jersey. His name is Joseph Schwartz. At its peak, his company Skyline Healthcare owned or operated more than 100 facilities across eleven states. What happened inside those facilities (the rationed diapers, the unpaid bills, the maggots, the residents left without food or clean water) is one of the cruelest stories of corporate neglect you will hear this year. When Schwartz finally got convicted of defrauding the government out of $38 million, he started making calls. In this episode, we'll follow the money from a nursing home empire to a presidential pardon, and then to a violent extortion plot that ended with an FBI arrest in Midtown Manhattan. EPISODE RESOURCES & SHOW NOTES ARTICLES & INVESTIGATIONS Brookings Register: Wave of SD nursing home closures hitting hardest in rural small towns URL…

Topics covered

  • nursing home neglect
  • corporate fraud
  • healthcare
  • criminal justice
  • pardon
  • extortion

Keywords

  • nursing home
  • neglect
  • Joseph Schwartz
  • Skyline Healthcare
  • corporate fraud
  • FBI
  • pardon
  • extortion
  • New Jersey
  • Midtown Manhattan

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Skyline Healthcare, FBI

Places: New Jersey, Midtown Manhattan

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