Bridgeport Health Care Center, which filed for bankruptcy on April 18, was raided yesterday, according to the union representing most of the facility’s workers, the Connecticut Post reported. Sherrie Weller, president of AFSCME Local 1522, said she knows little about the substance of the raid, but knows that a warrant was served and that FBI, Department of Labor staff and other law enforcement were on site yesterday morning. Weller and a small group of the workers staged a press conference and protest at the nursing home — which employs about 400 people — in early April, alleging that the workers weren’t getting paid on time, that there were insufficient funds deposited in their credit union and the company is failing to pay the third-party administrator that manages the workers’ health care benefits. At the time of their protests, the union and the workers laid much of their woes at the feet of the health care center’s chief financial officer Chaim Stern. Stern has been embattled for some time. In 2016, the U.S. Department of Labor sued him for allegedly diverting $4 million in retirement plan assets to a New York-based religious corporation and to himself.
