Brooklyn, New York — A nursing home company with a history of fraud settlements and Medicaid diversion allegations has quietly offloaded three of its flagship Brooklyn facilities for a combined $296 million — including a record-breaking $161.5 million sale that stands as the largest real estate transaction ever recorded in Borough Park.
The seller is Centers Health Care, the tri-state nursing home network owned by Kenneth Rozenberg and Daryl Hagler. The buyer is Emerald Group, a Lakewood, New Jersey-based healthcare company linked to Shmuel A. Serle. Huntington National Bank provided nearly $240 million to finance the purchase.
A $161.5 Million Record
The crown jewel of the deal is the Boro Park Center, a nine-story, 504-bed facility at 4915 10th Avenue in Brooklyn. Centers acquired it in 2011 for just $19 million. Hagler refinanced it for $78.4 million in 2017. It just changed hands for $161.5 million — more than eight times its original purchase price and a Borough Park all-time record.
Two additional properties rounded out the transaction: the Brooklyn Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Crown Heights sold for $73.5 million, and a cluster of lots tied to the Bushwick Center for Renal Dialysis fetched more than $61 million. Together, the three deals total $296 million.
Fraud Settlements Shadow the Sale
Centers Health Care and its owners haven’t operated without controversy. In 2024, Hagler and Rozenberg settled fraud and resident neglect allegations with the New York Attorney General’s office, agreeing to pay $45 million. The investigation alleged the pair used inflated rents charged by Hagler’s property companies to divert Medicaid and Medicare dollars away from resident care, paid phony fees to companies they controlled, and deliberately understaffed facilities. Independent financial monitors were imposed to oversee operations following the settlement.
A separate $6 million federal settlement followed, after 44 Centers nursing facilities admitted to submitting false cost reports to Medicare.
A late-2024 report from the New Jersey state comptroller alleged that Hagler and a business partner also “inflated rent payments from the nursing homes to their property companies, intentionally understaffed both facilities, and diverted to themselves tens of millions of dollars in Medicaid funding” at two New Jersey properties.
Bigger Picture: A $1 Billion Exit
These real estate sales come shortly after Elevance Health acquired Centers Plan for Healthy Living — the insurance arm of the Centers enterprise — in a deal that valued that subsidiary at more than $1.1 billion.
Taken together, the insurance sale and now the Brooklyn real estate transactions suggest the Centers empire is in the middle of a significant restructuring — whether by choice or necessity isn’t clear.
What’s not in question is that nursing home real estate remains a high-stakes market. These deals raise fresh questions about who gets to own nursing homes after a fraud settlement, and whether existing oversight mechanisms can keep up with the pace of transactions.
Neither Centers Health Care, Emerald Group, nor Hagler responded to requests for comment.
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