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Part 2: Criminal neglect, overlooked cruelty
Rotten food, violence and suspicious deaths - and state regulators failed to see it.
Tina Fake, now 43, was a high school dropout with a history of what authorities say is exploitative relationships with older people.
According to Dipalo's sworn statements, before Fake opened the Reaching Out home, she befriended an 88-year-old man named Clarence D. Shucker.
In April 2000, Shucker moved into the Fakes' home and named Tina Fake his sole heir.
One night, Shucker fell in the garage and broke his hip. Tina Fake left him in bed for 10 days, manipulating his legs in a torturous attempt at physical therapy.
Fake's daughter-in-law told authorities that Shucker had "moaned like an animal wanting to be put out of his misery."
When Fake finally took him to the hospital, he had bruises on his arms and pressure sores on his back and buttocks. He told doctors that he was in agonizing pain. He died three weeks after surgery.
In 2002, when Fake applied for a license to open Reaching Out in a suburban three-story house near Hershey, state regulators did not know about Shucker.
On paper, the home listed other administrators - not Tina Fake. Initially, she did not have the high school diploma required by the state, although she later earned a GED. But even the welfare department, state records make clear, knew she ran the place.
Her husband controlled the finances and was a near-daily presence in the home, investigators later found. But Clifford Fake's name was not on any document shared with state regulators - with good reason.
He had served four years in jail after being convicted in 1986 of aggravated assault and attempted murder. It's against state rules for violent felons to work in a personal-care home.
Tina Fake quickly became a favorite among some local social-services agencies because she accepted residents with mental-health issues who were difficult to place.
The Fakes exploited their residents from the beginning, Dipalo found.
In violation of assisted-living regulations and federal labor law, they made residents work without pay - cleaning toilets, changing adult diapers, mopping floors and walking dogs.
Each Tuesday, the Fakes ordered boarders to gather in an unheated garage and stuff newspapers and advertising circulars - 4,300 in all - into plastic bags. Clifford Fake was paid $1,500 a month to deliver them.
"She had the guests cleaning all the time," said Lucinda Dietz, a Navy veteran with a mental disability who lived at the home from June 2003 to February 2004. "I had the job of keeping the door windows clean. She made it seem like, 'Well, that's the least you can do.' "
When residents balked, Tina Fake threatened them, Dietz, 59, said.
"She used to tell people, 'We'll send you to a nursing home, and you know what they do to people in nursing homes. You'll be dead within a week.' "
When one elderly man refused to participate, one resident told authorities, Tina Fake punched him in the head.
The Fakes bought date-expired and spoiled food from an outlet in Harrisburg, Dipalo found. In addition, "bread and dessert items were routinely gathered from a local grocery store Dumpster," the detective reported.
Residents told him that they suffered nausea, stomach cramping and diarrhea.
