Accusations of fraud, lies, and neglect pile up around bankrupt Carson City sober-living facility: Part III

When the families and friends of Lyfe Recovery clients were introduced to the facility, they were sold on the idea that their loved ones would be in a supervised sober environment to help them beat their addictions. However, what Lyfe Recovery turned out to be was a shell, barely meeting the minimum requirements. Unfortunately, for Joe Tummarello, the minimum for his own needs weren’t met during his time at the Carson City based sober-living facility, which allegedly contributed to his death.

This is Part III in a three-part series.
To read Part I of this investigative series, click here.
To read Part II of this investigative series, click here.

The Last Straw

Lyfe Recovery had a contract with the Carson City courts to supply sober-living housing to their clients on Alternative Sentencing who needed a stable environment to help them as they transitioned into their new, sober lives. One of the reasons the court entered into the agreement was because they were assured the company would provide a house manager to supervise the clients.

However, when Carson City Justice Court found out the house manager at the Edmonds House had quit and Lyfe Recovery was unable to find a replacement, they could no longer accept Lyfe Recovery’s services, according to Carson City Court Administrator Max Cortes.

“The idea of sober living is to provide some stability and a safe place so offenders don’t go back to their original situations and relapse,” said Cortes. “In the contract, it is required that a house manager be on site to make sure people weren’t using drugs or alcohol, curfew was being met, and if there were any type of issues in the home, they were being reported to a probation officer.”

According to Cortes, Lyfe Recovery Owner Stacey Payne informed the courts she had obtained a full time job, and she started failing to provide all of the services the courts required. When former Lyfe Recovery’s Carson City House Manager Daniel Arnold left and they couldn’t replace him, the courts were forced to terminate the contract.

Cortes was also told by an Alternative Sentencing Officer that the clients had been asked to lie to a house appraiser. According to Cortes, the clients reported they had been told by Payne to tell the appraiser they were Tesla workers so they could get a better deal on the house for landlord Carl Bassett. Arnold agreed this was true.

“It’s one thing when you have the clients asking you to lie for them,” said Arnold. “It’s expected; they’re addicts. It’s another thing when your boss is asking you to lie. It made me very uncomfortable.”

“(Bassett) was having a really hard time refinancing his houses,” said Payne. “Part of it was my fault. Lenders didn’t want to finance a recovery residence. He called and said ‘if you want to keep that house you need to move the furniture out and say it’s a single-family residence.’ It was imperative to get the house refinanced. I didn’t tell (Arnold) to lie, I told him to not say shit to anyone.”

Payne moved five of the 10 beds into a loading truck the day before the appraiser came and replaced them after they had gone. She told Arnold to remove all the signs that said Lyfe Recovery or included chores lists or anything similar that could indicate the house was something more than a single-family residence.

“I didn’t say, ‘(Arnold), I’m going to have to ask you to lie,’” said Payne. “I just said there’s going to be an appraiser at the house and I’ve been in situations in the past where people have come asking questions and the guys started saying things they shouldn’t say, and all I need you to do is if someone asks any questions just say you don’t know, you’re roommates and you all work in the industrial area that’s it. I just gave him an example, and he took it as a direct order.”

However, according to Austin Rivers, a resident of Lyfe Recovery, this wasn’t the first time the residents were asked to lie by Payne.

According to Rivers, after Joe Tummarello died, Payne told him and the others at the Edmonds House that if anyone were to ask about Joe, they were to lie about the circumstances of his time at the house.

“We were told that if anyone asked about Joe, (we should say) that he was ‘a functioning member of our house’,” said Rivers. “That ‘he was alert and in good standing during his entire stay. We never found him wandering or out of place.’”

However, that was never the case, said Rivers.

“(Joe) seemed like he was constantly wandering around not knowing what to do,” said Rivers. “On multiple occasions Daniel Arnold had asked (Payne) if there were any other alternatives for him. She had simply said ‘his rent is paid he’s fine where he’s at.’”

According to Rivers, Payne on multiple occasions attempted to charge extra to the client’s accounts, sometimes for rent that had already paid to Payne by the courts. The last interaction Rivers had with Payne, he explicitly told her she wasn’t authorized to charge his account for rent until he spoke with the court. Payne was attempting to charge double the amount she and Rivers had previously agreed on, according to text messages between Rivers and Payne provided to Carson Now.

According to the text messages, Payne replied: “I would never process payment unless I got approval.”

However, shortly after, Rivers said a charge of $100 was taken from his account. When confronted with this, Payne at first denied she had charged him. When Rivers threatened to file a police report for fraud, Payne refunded the amount. This is only one of several times that Payne allegedly attempted to fraudulently retrieve funds from her clients, according to Rivers.

Since that time, neither he nor the other residents of the Edmonds House have been contacted by Payne.

Payne hadn’t told the Carson City courts about Joe’s death, or even that there were other people staying in the home that weren’t under the court’s supervision.

Court Administrator Cortes first heard about Joe’s death from Kathryn McCool, who had been asked by Payne to take over Lyfe Recovery’s clients and the Edmonds House to run under McCool’s non-profit shortly before Lyfe Recovery closed down.

“At first, I thought one of our clients had died in the home, and my first thought was that it was an overdose,” said Cortes. “I found out that it was not a court participant. We had no idea there were other people other than our own clients living in the home.”

According to Cortes, when she asked Payne about the death, Payne said Joe was a transient who had been placed into their care by a church who asked Payne to take him in, as he had no family to care for him and was essentially living on the streets. He was very ill, Payne told her, and they’d called an ambulance and he had “unfortunately passed away a few days later.”

Payne never mentioned Joe was a client of Lyfe Recovery and had been so for over a year before his death, or that he had issues with alcohol. Cortes said Payne had relayed that Joe was essentially just a homeless man who needed a place to stay for a few nights instead of being out on the streets but had never been an addict.

“I think she knew that was my concern, was whether or not she was bringing in someone who was addicted who would potentially cause our clients to relapse,” said Cortes. “She assured me he had no issues and made it sound like he had only been at their house for a day or so before they called him an ambulance and he went to the hospital.”

None of which, according to Arnold, McCool, Joe’s family, Payne’s previous Director of Operations Johna Smith, and even Payne herself, is true.

According to Cortes, they paid Payne directly for their client’s rent and had no idea that she was in debt to landlord Carl Bassett. When they found out in June she was behind on rent to such a great extent, they began paying the rent for their clients directly to Bassett. However, the change was too late, and the business was going under.

The courts began pulling their people out once they realized other people were living in the home that were not placed there by the courts, and once Arnold left, said Cortes. They decided not to go into business with McCool simply because she had never run a house before, and they weren’t comfortable with taking on the liability even with the backing of Bassett and Payne’s investor, Ken Thomas.

Aftermath

Suzanne Tummarello is Joe’s daughter, and the last time she spoke with her father he was in a nursing facility in Anaheim.

“He’d always had an issue with alcohol,” said Suzanne. “When I talked to him last, he was in a nursing home in Anaheim. I said ‘great, this is where you need to be,’ but he hated it. He was so mad, he hung up on me.”

Joe told his daughter he didn’t need to be in a convalescent home because he wasn’t dying or disabled. He checked himself out and took a bus to Reno, where his ex-wife picked him up and drove him to Carson City.

“Next thing I hear, I got a call from my brother who says ‘Dad’s in Carson-Tahoe Hospital, he’s not doing well, you need to get up here quick,’” said Suzanne. “I had no idea he was even in Nevada.”

When Suzanne arrived, she described Joe as being in grave condition. She felt confused, because the last time she’d spoken to him, he’d been completely fine. She found out from her family he’d come back to Nevada to be closer to her brother and step-mom, that he had found a sober living facility called Lyfe Recovery, and Stacey Payne had taken him in.

“He was a bag of bones,” she said. “Just skin and bones. My dad has always been either fit or even chubby. I barely recognized him. Nobody at Lyfe Recovery had been protecting him or helping him in anyway, and he hadn’t been able to take his medications or use his oxygen, which I’m sure is what put him into the state he was in.”

The day Joe was taken to the hospital and his son was contacted, his son attempted to call Lyfe Recovery to find out what had happened. On numerous occasions he said spent hours on the phone with Payne discussing the facilities and the rules of the house.

However, when he called the phone number he had called several times before, he found it had been disconnected. He couldn’t reach anyone.

According to Johna Smith, Payne’s previous Director of Operations, when Payne gave over the Las Vegas homes for her to run, she also gave her their website and disconnected their 800 number. None of the clients or family members were alerted to the changes as far as Smith knew.

Suzanne, however, found Payne’s information via Linked In and called her.

“She told me my dad had tried to take a car from another resident,” said Suzanne. “I don’t know if he was delirious or if he was trying to escape. I asked why they didn’t call 911 if he was trying to steal someone’s car, or why they didn’t call a doctor if they thought he was delirious. No one was doing anything; they were just leaving him to die.”

While Joe was in the hospital, his ex-wife went to the house to gather his things. Ellen Jackson had been given his bag of medication when she took him to the hospital, which were still sealed and had never once been opened during Joe’s stay the Edmonds house, but his ex-wife was able to collect some of his things and his clothing.

“His clothes were apparently completely soiled,” said Suzanne. “He wasn’t being taken care of in the least.”

When Suzanne asked why nothing had been done, she said Payne told her they’re not an assisted living facility.

“I said, ‘if you’re not an assisted living facility, you need to not take in people who need assistance, then take their money and leave them to die,’” said Suzanne. “It’s disgusting and horrific to think about how my dad lived the last weeks of his life.”

Stacey Payne admitted he needed a higher level of care.

“We’re not responsible to give people their medications,” said Payne. “It’s against the law. If someone is reliant on us to give medications, they need to be somewhere else. It’d be like a nurse putting someone under anesthesia and doing heart surgery. (Arnold) told me Joe needed a higher level of care. We both determined it was not a right fit for him, but not to the degree he was not medically okay. He couldn’t remember what room he was in and he’d walk into other people’s room and take their cigarettes.”

However, she never contacted any social services or law enforcement, or even Joe’s own family members, to find a new suitable living facility for him.

After Joe’s death, Suzanne contacted the Carson City Sheriff’s Office who referred her to Aging and Disability Services. Suzanne left messages but never received a call. A few weeks later, after another inquiry was made in connection with this investigation, a social worker from Aging and Disability Services said that they don’t investigate cases after a person is deceased.

It is unknown at this time whether or not the Carson City Sheriff’s Office or the Nevada Attorney General’s Office will pursue criminal charges relating to Joe’s death.

“After Joe died, I sent an email to Sheriff (Ken) Furlong offering them any assistance they needed in connection with Joe’s death,” said Payne.

Sheriff Furlong, however, received no such email.

“I’m unaware of any email being sent to me,” said Sheriff Furlong. “If those circumstances were given to us, we would have assigned someone to at least look into it.”

It’s not uncommon, said Furlong, for the Sheriff’s Office not to be made aware of a death that occurred in the hospital.

At this time, Payne has started a new job with another drug and alcohol facility and runs an alpaca farm in Fallon. Arnold has moved out of the area and has secured a new job.

“This has been the most difficult year of my life,” said Payne. “Being a small business, we gave it our all. Staff worked without pay and they said, ‘don’t worry about it’ because when you have someone right in front of you that is so fragile that if you leave them they could die, then we put in the time and effort and we really tried to be conscientious about what we were doing.”

Suzanne and her brother are still looking for justice in connection with their father’s death.

“I don’t want money for myself,” said Suzanne. “I want to make sure that this never happens to anyone, ever again. When I asked Stacey Payne why my father wasn’t being looked after, she said, ‘Well where were you?’ But my question was, where was she, if she was collecting my father’s money to provide care for him, why didn’t she know he was dying?”

Joe Tummarello died at Carson Tahoe Hospital on July 25. He was 76 years old, and is survived by his daughter, Suzanne, his son, his ex-wife and one grandchild.

We will update this story as new information becomes available.