Enforcement · April 4, 2026 · 10 min

What CMS Ownership Records Show About Former Skyline Personnel

By Robert Benard, MS, RN, CNS, AGACNP-BC, PMHNP-BC

CMS ownership records show that Skyline Healthcare’s former CFO is currently listed in an operational management role at a New York nursing home, and Joseph Schwartz’s son holds a 10% ownership stake at a Miami Beach facility. Both findings connect to a network that also appears across former Skyline facilities in Florida.

What this post covers

This is the third in a four-part series on the federal healthcare fraud enforcement surge of 2026. The first post laid out the timeline. The second post traced where Skyline Healthcare's 56 nursing homes ended up after Joseph Schwartz's conviction and the chain's collapse.

This post examines something different. Instead of following the facilities, it follows the people. What do CMS ownership records show about former Skyline personnel and Schwartz family members in the current data?

Two findings emerged from a search of CMS ownership files, Change of Ownership records, and the All Owners database — covering 463,175 total rows across eight tables.

Finding 1: Skyline's former CFO is currently listed in a nursing home management role

Brandon Augustyniak served as Chief Financial Officer of Skyline Services Group LLC and Skyline SD Management LLC — the entities Joseph Schwartz used to operate as many as 100 nursing homes before the chain collapsed in 2018–2019. Augustyniak appeared as Corporate Officer and Operational/Managerial Control across Skyline-era facilities, with his title listed in CMS records as "CFO of Skyline Services Group LLC" and variants including "CFO of Skyline SD Management LLC."

CMS Change of Ownership records link Augustyniak to 98 owner records across 51 enrollment IDs and 51 unique facility CCNs — spanning Pennsylvania, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, New York, New Jersey, Arkansas, and Kentucky. This is the exact same state cluster as Joseph Schwartz's Skyline empire.

As of the current CMS ownership file (January 2026 snapshot), Augustyniak is listed as OPERATIONAL/MANAGERIAL CONTROL at:

Glen Island Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation — CCN 335611, New Rochelle, New York

Role: Operational/Managerial Control (since September 1, 2022)
CMS Stars: 2 out of 5
Beds: 183
Composite Risk Score: 28.7 / 100
Total CMS Penalties: $36,299 (1 record)
Health Deficiencies: 24 total, 0 immediate jeopardy, 1 actual harm
Zero-RN Days: 0.0%
Staffing: 3.078 total HPRD, 0.82 RN HPRD
Related-Party Costs: $1,920,369 (FY2024) — on 183 beds
Antipsychotic Prescribing Rate: 12.9% (below national average)
Ownership Type: For profit - Corporation

The full current ownership record for Glen Island:

Owner	Role	Ownership %
Flax, Maury	5%+ Direct Ownership	100%
Augustyniak, Brandon	Operational/Managerial Control	—
Rabadi, Mazan	Operational/Managerial Control	—
Friedman, Leah	Corporate Director	—
Flax, Maury	Corporate Officer	—

OversightReports flags Leah Friedman as a serial owner controlling 15 facilities with an average of $134,205 in CMS fines and an average 2.0-star rating across her portfolio. The Friedman name appears again in the next section.

What the CMS records show — and what they do not

CMS ownership records are federal data. They show who is listed in what role at which facility and when. They do not show why someone was hired, whether they were investigated, or whether CMS reviewed their background before approving the ownership change. There is no indication in the data that Augustyniak was barred from Medicare participation. The records simply show that the CFO of a chain that collapsed leaving residents stranded, staff unpaid, and $38 million in unpaid federal taxes — a chain whose founder was convicted and pardoned — is currently listed in an operational management role at a for-profit nursing home in New York.

The facility page is linked above. Anyone can verify these numbers.

Finding 2: Joseph Schwartz's son holds a current ownership stake

Louis Schwartz — identified in CMS CHOW records as part of the Skyline-era ownership structure — currently holds a 10% indirect ownership interest at:

Sands at South Beach Care Center — CCN 105229, Miami Beach, Florida

Role: 5%+ Indirect Ownership Interest (since March 17, 2018)
Ownership: 10%
CMS Stars: 5 out of 5
Beds: 230
Composite Risk Score: 13.6 / 100
Total CMS Penalties: $0
Health Deficiencies: 26 total, 0 immediate jeopardy, 0 actual harm
Zero-RN Days: 0.0%
Staffing: 3.166 total HPRD, 0.918 RN HPRD
Related-Party Costs: $1,845,997 (FY2024)
Antipsychotic Prescribing Rate: 9.2% (below national average)
Chain: ONYX HEALTH (26 facilities, avg 3.38 stars)

The full current ownership record:

Owner	Role	Ownership %	Since
42 Collins Avenue Care Inc	5%+ Direct Ownership	100%	03/17/2018
Friedman, Leopold	5%+ Indirect Ownership	45%	03/19/2018
Halpern, Michael	5%+ Indirect Ownership	18%	03/17/2018
Scheiner, Heather	5%+ Indirect Ownership	18%	03/17/2018
Schwartz, Louis	5%+ Indirect Ownership	10%	03/17/2018
Bleich, Michael	5%+ Indirect Ownership	5%	03/19/2018
Kohn, Zevi	5%+ Indirect Ownership	5%	03/17/2018
Sperber, Jonathan	Operational/Managerial Control	—	05/01/2018

To be clear about what this finding represents: the Sands at South Beach is a 5-star facility with zero penalties and no staffing concerns. Louis Schwartz's 10% ownership stake is not, by itself, evidence of any problem. The facility's enforcement profile is clean.

What makes this worth noting is the context. Louis Schwartz appeared across 2 enrollment IDs in the CMS CHOW records as part of the Skyline-era ownership structure. His father Joseph Schwartz was convicted of $38 million in tax fraud, pardoned after three months, and no longer appears in any CMS ownership record. Louis Schwartz's stake at the Sands is the only currently active Schwartz-family CMS ownership interest identified in this search.

The Friedman network

The name Friedman appears in both findings above, and it also appears in the previous post in this series.

Leah Friedman is listed as Corporate Director at Glen Island (where Augustyniak holds the operational management role). OversightReports flags her as controlling 15 facilities with an average 2.0-star CMS rating and average fines of $134,205.
Leopold Friedman holds a 45% indirect ownership stake at the Sands at South Beach (where Louis Schwartz holds 10%). OversightReports flags him as controlling 26 facilities under the ONYX HEALTH chain.
Leopold Friedman also appears as the controlling owner across Kensington Gardens and Sandgate Gardens in Florida — two of the five Aston Health facilities that were formerly part of Joseph Schwartz's Skyline empire, as documented in the previous post.

CMS ownership records do not disclose the relationship between Leah Friedman and Leopold Friedman, or whether they are related. What the data shows is that the Friedman name appears across three different connections to the former Skyline ownership structure: the facility where Skyline's former CFO works, the facility where Joseph Schwartz's son holds an ownership stake, and two former Skyline facilities in Florida now operating under new names.

Each of these facility pages is linked above. The ownership tables are visible to anyone who clicks through.

Why ownership transparency matters to the CRUSH conversation

The CRUSH RFI (91 FR 9803, Section II.B) specifically asks about ownership disclosure requirements. In my public comment to CMS, I supported enhanced beneficial ownership disclosure at the 5% threshold, in machine-readable format, updated at least annually. The reason is what these two findings illustrate: chain-level ownership patterns are invisible when facilities are examined individually.

OversightReports.com maps ownership and chain relationships for all 14,713 Medicare-certified SNFs using CMS Provider Information Ownership files. The platform displays 599 ownership groups with chain-average CMS star ratings and chain-average civil money penalties. The ownership tables shown above come directly from these files.

The OIG's March 2026 reports on antipsychotic misuse and schizophrenia diagnosis gaming are also relevant here. I wrote to the OIG's Deputy Inspector General four days after those reports were published, sharing how OversightReports.com makes facility-level antipsychotic prescribing data accessible. As noted in the previous post, 25 of the 57 Schwartz-linked facilities report antipsychotic prescribing rates above 20% — well above the national average. The ability to see that pattern depends on being able to trace ownership connections across facilities, which is what the CRUSH RFI is asking CMS to improve.

What comes next

The final post in this series looks at American Senior Communities — the Indiana nursing home chain whose former CEO James Burkhart was convicted of a $19.4 million fraud and kickback scheme and had his sentence commuted by President Biden in December 2024. ASC is still operating 89 facilities. The enforcement and staffing data across those facilities tells its own story.

Source index

All primary sources referenced in this post:

Government documents

CMS data sources

CMS Provider Information Ownership file (ownership.csv, January 2026 snapshot)
CMS Change of Ownership file (SNF_CHOW_2026.01.02.csv)
CMS CHOW Owners file (SNF_CHOW_Owners_2026.01.02.csv)
CMS All Owners file (SNF_All_Owners_2024.12.05.csv)

OversightReports.com facility pages

Robert Benard's submissions

News coverage

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