They were banned from assisted living. They stayed in the caregiving business.

Rats had infested the assisted living facility in Van Nuys, state investigators said. Elderly residents wandered off without supervision, medications weren’t properly administered, and emergency pull cords in some bedrooms didn’t work, the state alleged.

One blind resident, who had no way to call a caregiver for help, had to defecate repeatedly in a trash can, according to allegations made by the California Department of Social Services, which said the home had been smeared throughout with residue from human feces.

Alarmed by those and other alleged violations, Social Services officials revoked the license for the company running California Villa of Van Nuys six years ago.

Tatyana and Edvard Krivitsky, who were identified by the state as being associated with the home, didn’t admit to the state accusations, but the couple agreed in a stipulation that they would never oversee or work in such assisted living facilities again — or even set foot in one unless they were visiting a family member who lived there.

Yet that ban by the Department of Social Services didn’t stop Tatyana Krivitsky from being involved in other kinds of caregiving businesses overseen by different state agencies, including residential facilities for people suffering serious medical conditions, a Times investigation found.

The prohibition applied to “residential care facilities for the elderly,” commonly referred to as assisted living or eldercare facilities, as well as other nonmedical care facilities under the umbrella of the Department of Social Services.

But Tatyana Krivitsky remained an executive with companies that co-own “congregate living health facilities” — home-like sites that are supposed to provide medical care even more intense than that in a skilled nursing facility, state records show. Congregate living health facilities are under the oversight of the California Department of Public Health.

In the years since she was banned from assisted living, two of the congregate facilities connected with Tatyana Krivitsky were faulted for serious violations that Public Health regulators said had played a role in the deaths of residents. Krivitsky, a corporate officer, said she handled “the business aspect” and wasn’t directly involved in patient care at any facilities.

State restrictions make it difficult to confirm how many people have stayed involved in other forms of care after being banned from assisted living, but The Times was able to uncover several other cases by combing through databases and records.

The phenomenon is a result of the fragmented system that regulates California facilities that care for elderly, disabled or ailing people: Different agencies in Sacramento are charged with overseeing different kinds of caregiving facilities.

If the Department of Social Services bans an individual from assisted living homes, that doesn’t automatically keep that person out of facilities licensed by other government agencies, such as the congregate facilities regulated by the Department of Public Health.

That has enabled some operators banned from eldercare homes to keep owning, overseeing or working at facilities or services regulated by other agencies, The Times found.

One woman, for example, was prohibited in 2013 from operating assisted living facilities by the Department of Social Services after a resident at an Orange County home suffered a serious decline in health that led to emergency hospitalization, according to a state accusation.

In the years since, state records indicate she remained involved with homes for people with developmental disabilities that have been faulted by the state for shortcomings in care, as either a corporate official or facility administrator.

A West Covina nurse and administrator was banned from assisted living facilities by the Department of Social Services after eldercare homes in the San Gabriel Valley were accused of numerous violations, including failing to properly care for someone who went into septic shock. She was later listed as the administrator for a local hospice regulated by the Department of Public Health, which was not prohibited under the Social Services ban.

And another operator was prohibited by the Department of Social Services from getting an eldercare license again after being accused of unlawfully taking money from a client and failing to have adequate food at a Garden Grove facility.

Despite the ban, she opened up three eldercare facilities in Folsom before being banned again. She then went into the home healthcare business, which is regulated by the Department of Public Health.

Such moves have troubled advocates for people who are aging or disabled.

“There’s no reason why you should all of a sudden become competent or qualified or compassionate just because you switch from one category to another,” said Eric Carlson of Justice in Aging, a group aimed at fighting poverty among older adults.

Scattered oversight

Capri in the Desert, a congregate living health facility in a residential neighborhood in Lancaster.

(Photo illustration; Google Maps)

In California, finding trustworthy care will become only more pressing as the state braces for the needs of a rapidly aging population. By 2040, 22% of Californians are expected to be 65 or older — up from 14% in 2020, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

Amid a growing need for care, Californians have no simple way to check whether a provider at a health facility or home health agency was previously banned from assisted living. The Department of Social Services doesn’t publicly post the names of banned individuals.

The Times obtained their names through a public records request and checked licensing databases for other kinds of facilities to find matches. But California agencies wouldn’t verify whether people with the same names were the banned individuals, saying that they were prohibited by state law from confirming such personal information.

To confirm, The Times dug up other records, knocked on doors and matched addresses, business names and signatures. Experts said it is unrealistic to expect Californians to do that kind of legwork as they search for care for themselves or family members.

The Department of Social Services oversees more than 12,000 eldercare facilities licensed across California. Under state law, it can ban someone from operating, directing or working at them if that person has violated state rules for the facilities, engaged in financial malfeasance or harmed residents. It can also prohibit those individuals from operating or working at any other kind of facility licensed by the department.

More than 3,000 people statewide have faced such exclusion orders since 1985, some for a few years, some for life. “It takes a lot to get excluded,” said Molly Davies, president of the social services group Wise & Healthy Aging.

“These are people who are flagrantly disregarding the regulations and the rights of the people who are living in these places and causing harm,” said Davies, a former ombudsperson for long-term care in Los Angeles County.

But those bans apply only to the kinds of caregiving facilities that the Department of Social Services oversees. Spokesperson Scott Murray said the department can’t ban people from running other kinds of facilities that aren’t under its umbrella.

However, it “does have the authority to share information on such persons to other agencies to be used in their own decisions,” Murray said.

Murray said the department regularly shares information about people who have been banned from its facilities with other state agencies, including Public Health, which licenses a wide array of health facilities and services.

Public Health said that when it gets such information, it can conduct its own investigation, but nothing in state law requires it to take action. The result is that people banned from assisted living have been able to be involved in other kinds of care, troubling advocates.

“If you don’t want them near aged or disabled adults in assisted living, you certainly don’t want them near aged or disabled adults in healthcare settings,” said Tony Chicotel, senior staff attorney for California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform.

The Social Services and Public Health departments are both under the California Health and Human Services Agency, which declined to make its secretary, Kim Johnson, available for an interview.

Brandon Richards, a spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom, said that “the L.A. Times’ reporting raises significant concerns that we’re taking seriously and actively looking into.”

Some advocates for elderly and disabled people see banned individuals staying involved with other caregiving facilities as a symptom of a broader resistance at state agencies to cracking down on providers as an aging population faces a growing need for care.

Davies acknowledged that California needs beds for elderly residents, but said that the state shouldn’t keep facilities open at the expense of the health and safety of residents.

“If that is the trade-off, it is completely unacceptable,” she said.

Caring for ‘difficult patients’

Tatyana Krivitsky defended the track record of the congregate facilities, saying their history of violations was “not bad at all” given their patient population.

“We are looking after very difficult patients. … Patients who will not be accepted by home health. Patients who will not be accepted by hospice,” she said. The state knows that, she said, and “they have no problem to license us and continue licensing us.”

Speaking with Times reporters outside a Studio City condo complex in February, Krivitsky said her experience included caring for her mother-in-law for more than two decades. The 64-year-old was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, according to a legal deposition.

She studied at a Los Angeles community college before working as an operations manager for an L.A. company where she supervised doctors and respiratory therapists, according to a resume included in Department of Public Health files.

In the interview, she downplayed her involvement at California Villa of Van Nuys, saying that she didn’t run the facility but was “the wife of the owner.” State records indicate the Van Nuys home was licensed to Ruchel Enterprises, a company that listed Edvard Krivitsky as its chief executive and Tatyana Krivitsky as its chief financial officer in filings with the California secretary of state.

Tatyana and Edvard Krivitsky were banned from running or overseeing assisted living homes in 2019. State records showed that they remained connected to another kind of care facility: congregate living health facilities.

Companies led by Tatyana or Edvard Krivitsky had ownership stakes in four such facilities, according to financial reports and documents filed with state agencies in recent years.

The six-bed homes, in the Antelope Valley cities of Lancaster and Palmdale as well as the San Fernando Valley neighborhood of Reseda, have names evocative of European getaways such as “Capri in the Desert” and “Napoli in the Desert.”

Tatyana Krivitsky described herself as a “general partner” in the companies that owned the facilities, but told The Times it was nurses and medical professionals who ran them. Financial reports submitted to the state list “Tatiana Krivitsky” as the facilities’ “general partner/operator.”

“I do the payroll. I do the business aspect,” she said.

After the interview in Studio City, she declined to address most of the follow-up questions emailed to her.

Her husband, Edvard, interviewed separately, said he works in construction and wasn’t involved in the congregate health facilities.

Before Edvard and Tatyana Krivitsky were legally excluded from operating eldercare facilities, their son Steve Krivitsky was also banned by the Department of Social Services when the state revoked the license for Park Ventura Retirement, a Woodland Hills assisted living facility where he was an administrator.

State officials alleged that Park Ventura residents wandered away without proper supervision, in two cases faulting Steve Krivitsky specifically for failing to observe changes in a resident who left the premises as a result. They also accused Steve Krivitsky of falling short of state requirements for a facility administrator, saying he had demonstrated “a lack of understanding of the applicable regulations.”

Those were just some of the alleged violations at Park Ventura laid out by the Department of Social Services, and the facility also had been sued repeatedly by families of residents over allegations of neglect.

Steve Krivitsky didn’t respond to requests for comment. He has been listed in state filings as an executive or president of companies reported to have financial stakes in Capri in the Desert and Napoli in the Desert, but his name was not on filings for those companies in recent years.

The Department of Public Health issued a total of three “AA” citations — the most severe category —to two of the homes linked to the Krivitskys over a decade. In that same period, only one other congregate facility across the state received a citation of that severity, according to state records.

Nine years ago, the department concluded that a series of failures at Capri in the Desert, including staffers not listening to how a patient was breathing, was the “proximate cause” of a woman dying the morning after she was admitted to the Lancaster facility. The state citation didn’t name Tatyana Krivitsky or any other individuals. Krivitsky said she didn’t provide care for patients.

In 2020, Public Health investigators found that a 58-year-old man had choked to death after staffers at the same Lancaster facility failed to follow physician orders to give him pureed or finely chopped foods — instead serving him a corn dog that wasn’t adequately chopped up, according to reports from the Department of Public Health and the Los Angeles County medical examiner.

Staffers knew the man, who the state said was diagnosed with developmental delay, ate too quickly and had trouble swallowing, according to the report by the department. The state found Capri in the Desert had also failed to follow its own policy about promptly calling 911 during the choking incident.

The man, whom The Times identified through public records as William Craine, died 10 months after Tatyana and Edvard Krivitsky were banned from eldercare facilities by the Department of Social Services.

Another home in Lancaster linked to the Krivitskys, San Marino in the Desert, was faulted by Public Health investigators in 2024 for using psychotropic medication to sedate a man for the convenience of its staff. The investigators cited that as one of several violations that combined were a “substantial factor” in his death.

The state citation for the facility didn’t name the Krivitskys or refer by name to any other individual. Financial reports for San Marino in the Desert list one of its owners as IEG Corp., which identified its CEO as Edvard Krivitsky and its chief financial officer as Tatyana Krivitsky in a state filing last year.

Nursing employees told the investigators that the 69-year-old man, who had been admitted with gangrene on his feet, was often confused and sometimes tried to pull out his tubes. One night, a nurse gave him the painkiller Norco, the antipsychotic Haldol, the sedative Ativan and the antihistamine Benadryl, according to the report from the Department of Public Health.

Hours later, he was found not breathing. State regulators said giving Norco and antipsychotic medication together could result in a coma or death. A nurse told investigators that a cocktail of Ativan, Benadryl and Haldol was “a normal practice in the facility.”

Geriatrician Michael Wasserman said that based on the description laid out by the state, “each and every one of those medications was used inappropriately, but in combination it’s more than inappropriate. … It’s irresponsible and egregious.”

Carrie Hughes, a licensed vocational nurse supervisor at the four facilities, said that after the death at San Marino in the Desert, facility policies on administering such drugs were changed and a nurse who had given the medications too close together in time was reprimanded. The doctor and the director of nursing involved are “no longer with us,” she said.

Hughes said the choking death resulted from “circumstances beyond our control,” because the patient “shoveled in all the food as fast as he could get it into his mouth.”

“You cannot prevent stuff like that,” Tatyana Krivitsky said. “It’s impossible.”

Banned in some facilities, but not others

It’s not only the Krivitskys. The Times found that other Californians prohibited from running assisted living facilities have also stayed involved in other kinds of caregiving businesses, according to state records and interviews.

Rosalinda Ulit was excluded in 2013 from all care facilities licensed by the Department of Social Services when the state revoked the license for a Buena Park eldercare home where it alleged she and other staff members had failed to provide adequate care and a safe environment to a resident who suffered bruising and other conditions “evidencing a serious decline in physical and mental health resulting in emergency hospitalization.”

Yet since at least 2023, Ulit has been an administrator of Monticello Home, a Buena Park care facility for people with developmental disabilities that is licensed by the Department of Public Health, according to government records.

A company at which she has served as a director, Rose-LuAnn Homes, is also licensed by the department to run another facility for disabled people — Ridglea Home — with the same address and name as the assisted living home that was shut down, according to state records.

Ulit didn’t respond to interview requests or written questions. Monticello Home and Ridglea Home have been faulted by state investigators for shortcomings in care, including putting some residents at risk of choking by not properly preparing their food. The Public Health reports don’t specifically name Ulit or any other individual.

In Garden Grove, Esther Bercea had her facility licenses revoked and was barred from applying again to run eldercare homes in 1997 after being accused by the Department of Social Services of insufficient staffing, inadequate food for residents and “unlawfully obtaining” money from a client, according to state records.

Yet the same state agency permitted her to open three more eldercare facilities in Folsom from 2003 to 2009. Bercea, reached by phone, said she didn’t realize at the time that she had been banned, blaming her English skills. The Department of Social Services said it now has systems to check whether someone is eligible before they are licensed.

State regulators banned Bercea again in 2018, saying she had failed to disclose her past revocations and faulting her for insufficient staffing at one of the Folsom homes after one resident attacked another, who suffered broken ribs.

Dale Robertson, who used a ventilator after being diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, in a photo taken by his daughter. His family sued the Napoli in the Desert facility after his 2017 death.

(Tracy King)

“I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t neglect anybody,” Bercea said of the accusations. “They can write whatever they want to — I had enough staff.”

Bercea later served as chief financial officer and part owner of a home healthcare company, Bellestar Home Health Care, according to state records. The business, which is licensed by the Department of Public Health, advertises that it provides infusions, wound care and other medical services.

In the San Gabriel Valley, Loida Zamora Barrientos was banned by the Department of Social Services from assisted living facilities in 2016 after homes she was involved with were accused of numerous violations, including not providing residents with toothpaste or soap.

Social Services officials alleged that at one home in Covina she was involved in operating, staff had failed to provide proper care for a resident who became unresponsive because of septic shock from a urinary tract infection.

Barrientos was also accused of failing to protect residents from “financial abuse” after a staffer made out more than $30,000 in checks to the staffer herself and another caregiver, using a checkbook that belonged to two residents, according to the state accusation

Barrientos called herself a victim, telling Times reporters that even though an employee had stolen money, “because I’m the employer, of course they put the blame on me.” She denied the accusations of other problems with resident care.

After she was banned by the Department of Social Services, Public Health records listed Barrientos as the administrator for Accord Hospice and Palliative Care in West Covina. Barrientos, a registered nurse, told The Times she was simply a consultant to Accord and hadn’t been involved with the business for years.

Barrientos said a Social Services ban shouldn’t prevent her from working at other kinds of care facilities. Social Services inspectors aren’t doctors or nurses, she said, and “a lot of them don’t know what they’re talking about.”

The Department of Social Services said that although its inspectors aren’t required to be medical professionals, they undergo extensive training on assisted living regulations and the aging process, and that if medical questions arise during their work, inspectors can turn to registered nurses at the department.

‘Our family will never be the same’

Napoli in the Desert, a congregate living health facility in a residential neighborhood in Palmdale.

(Photo illustration; Google Maps)

The Antelope Valley facilities tied to the Krivitskys have also been sued in Los Angeles County Superior Court by patients and their families.

Among them were the wife and children of Dale Robertson, who used a ventilator after being diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare and paralyzing autoimmune disorder. His family alleged in a 2018 lawsuit that the 67-year-old grandfather had died a year earlier as the result of neglect after his tracheal tube became disconnected.

Robertson “literally suffocated, while being completely and tragically aware of what was happening to him, but powerless to stop the inevitable result, his slow and agonizing death from oxygen deprivation,” the lawsuit said.

Family members said Robertson was a devout Catholic who loved fishing, working on cars and listening to bluegrass and mariachi music. When his wife, Alma, decided to take in her twin nieces, he welcomed them into their home. One of those nieces, Lizeth Robertson, said he told her: “You’re not my step-anything. You are my kid.”

He “was the glue that held our family together,” said Tracy King, one of five children whom Robertson raised in Lancaster. “Our family will never be the same.”

Tatyana Krivitsky denied the allegations in a court filing. After the case went to arbitration, she testified as a corporate officer of Pieces Group, which is licensed to run Napoli in the Desert, where Robertson died.

The court arbitrator concluded that Krivitsky’s investigation into Robertson’s death was basically “to talk to her employees, who told her that they didn’t do anything wrong.” Hughes, the licensed vocational nurse supervisor, told The Times that Robertson was disconnected from the ventilator only after he had already suffered cardiac arrest and needed to be resuscitated manually.

Hughes said staff immediately started CPR after doing so, disputing a statement by an emergency responder that none had been administered when he arrived. A physician testified that Robertson “shouldn’t have died. His death was caused by a lack of attention and care,” according to the court arbitrator.

Napoli in the Desert was ordered to pay $10.3 million to the family and its attorneys.

Congregate facilities linked to the Krivitskys have faced other accusations in court over the years:

• Betsy Thomas, a 64-year-old who was paralyzed on one side, moved into Capri of the Desert in Lancaster after the Krivitskys had already been banned from assisted living.

  In a lawsuit filed in 2022 in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Thomas’ sister alleged that before Betsy died the previous year, she was so badly neglected that she ended up in the emergency room with an infected bedsore, disheveled and covered in urine.

  Tatyana and Steve Krivitsky denied the allegations in an answer to the complaint. Hughes, the nurse supervisor at the facility, told The Times that Thomas developed a bedsore, but “we did everything that we were supposed to be doing” to treat it. The case settled confidentially in 2024.

• Gregg Keyes, 64, said that more than a year and a half after leaving Napoli in the Desert in 2021, he still suffered shooting pains and convulsions from a pressure wound that had grown to nearly 8 inches in width while he was staying there.

  “I couldn’t believe they had let it get that bad,” Keyes said in an interview. He sued Tatyana and Steve Krivitsky and the facility, accusing them of neglect and abuse.

  The Krivitskys denied the allegations in court filings. Hughes told The Times that Keyes already had a wound when he arrived and often refused being repositioned, undermining efforts to help it heal. Keyes settled his suit for a confidential sum.

• Charles Binger lived for roughly three years at Park Ventura, the Woodland Hills assisted living facility where Steve Krivitsky served as an administrator, before being moved to Napoli in the Desert and then to Capri in the Desert, according to a lawsuit filed by his daughter.

  In the suit filed against Steve and Tatyana Krivitsky in 2015 — roughly a year after his death at the age of 77 — his daughter alleged Binger developed severe wounds on his feet at Park Ventura. Janet Binger told The Times she was shocked to find him in diapers that she said went unchanged for hours.

  When he was ultimately hospitalized after his subsequent stays at Napoli and Capri, his pressure sores were so infected and gangrenous that doctors amputated one of his legs below the knee, according to the lawsuit.

  The Krivitskys denied the allegations in a court filing. The lawsuit was settled for undisclosed terms.

Attorney Jody Moore, whose law firm Johnson Moore represented Binger, Keyes and Thomas in their suits against the Krivitskys, likened the situation to “someone being banned from a child care and running a preschool.”

The Antelope Valley congregate facilities weren’t the end of the story: In 2021, another state agency — the California Department of Health Care Services — granted a license for “Bellagio in the Desert RTC,” a residential treatment center for drug or alcohol addiction in Lancaster.

Attorney Jody Moore, seen here outside Los Angeles County Superior Court in Van Nuys, has represented families suing congregate living health facilities connected to the Krivitskys.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

State records for Bellagio in the Desert RTC include letters in which Tatyana Krivitsky identified herself as “general partner” and “CEO.” The licensing application indicated no owners or executives had ever had a state license revoked by the Department of Social Services.

The Department of Health Care Services said it doesn’t ask Social Services for such information unless an applicant reveals they had a license revoked, suspended or denied. Being banned from assisted living wouldn’t automatically prohibit someone from operating a treatment center, the department said, because its regulations don’t authorize it to act on a ban by another state agency.

However, the department can later suspend or revoke a license if someone misrepresents facts on an application. Health Care Services said it had opened an investigation in November, weeks after The Times began asking questions, and said it was continuing as of early March.

Krivitsky told the Times in February that a consultant had handled the licensing application. She declined to comment further after The Times emailed her a copy of the application that included a page signed by “Tatyana Krivitski,” who was listed as “administrator.”

Janet Binger said she was appalled to learn that the Krivitskys had remained involved in other caregiving facilities.

Tatyana Krivitsky said being barred from eldercare facilities had no bearing on the congregate homes because they have “completely different licensing” from the congregate homes, which she said are doing “unbelievable, tremendous things,” trying to help people in need.

As for Binger, Krivitsky said in an email that “she just wants the money.”

Binger rejected that suggestion. She said that losing her father — a “larger than life” jokester who loved hunting, fishing and bowling — had broken her heart and drained her trust.

“I wanted to make sure,” she said, “that those people were never able to take care of anybody again.”