PALM SPRINGS, Fla. — WPTV is working to get answers for employees and patients at a Palm Beach County behavioral health center that shut down unexpectedly.
Employees who said they haven't been paid reached out to us for help and their concern for the addiction and mental health patients left scrambling to find the help they need.
While we don't know why Retreat Behavioral Health in Palm Springs abruptly shut down, court documents shine a light on a history of financial turmoil for the facility's owners.
Region C Palm Beach County
Employees waiting on paychecks after mental health facility closes
Inside the gated parking lot Monday, WPTV cameras captured people hugging and carrying items from the building.
On Tuesday, the parking lot was quiet. Only a few cars were parked there.
"As we stand now, we are closing services and are hopeful for new opportunities to reopen the doors," reads part of an email sent to Retreat Behavioral Health employees Monday night by Chief Administrative Officer Scott Korogodsky.
"I'm upset, I feel taken advantage of, I feel manipulated," said a Retreat Behavioral Health nurse who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for her future career prospects. "I cried, I got mad, I got angry, and now I'm just in disbelief."
This nurse is the second employee to tell WPTV chief investigator Jamie Ostroff they're still owed last Friday's paycheck following the death of the facility's owner, Peter Schorr, which was announced Monday.
"I'm very sorry for your loss. But on the same token … all we want is answers. All we want is our pay. And we need that as soon as possible," said Cody Snyder, an intake specialist at Retreat Behavioral Health.
Another nurse who said she wasn't paid still went to work Saturday. She also asked to remain anonymous.
"It was chaos," she said. "We had 106 patients on Friday. They told us we were going to be discharging them all by Monday. And so by Saturday, there was probably half of those patients left. It's stressful because a lot of these patients are homeless. They're mentally unwell. They don't have places to go, they don't have homes, they don't have families that will accept them back."
While internal communications at Retreat Behavioral Health and a statement provided by a spokeswoman Monday night said patients were being discharged and transferred to other facilities.
The nurse estimates close to 30 patients were left with no place to go.
"The patient care coordinators, they care tremendously about the patients. I will say that, so they did their best to find places. But other than that, they were told that from the executives that they had to get the patients out even if that meant walking out the gate," the nurse continued. "They just walked out the gate with trash bags over their back with the belongings that they have."
While the workers worry about their own future, as well as the future of the patients they cared for, court documents are shedding light on a troubled financial past for the owners of Retreat.
A lawsuit filed in January against Schorr in Palm Beach County accuses him of hanging onto a $50,000 deposit for a property sale that didn’t go through.
A New York lawsuit seeks more than $5 million from the company that owns Retreat for “numerous defaults” on a loan, dating back to 2018.
Both lawsuits are still pending.
"Do I need to vet every company that I apply for? Like, it just, it now makes me question everything," one of the nurses said.
WPTV's calls and emails Tuesday to the retreat spokeswoman and Korogodsky have gone unanswered.
The Monday night memo from Korogodsky said, "Commitments to staff, specifically the last week’s payroll, is and will remain the top priority."
"I unfortunately, don't believe that I will (get paid)," the nurse who worked Saturday. "I don't have faith in the company. ... They've lost my faith entirely."
