Exclusive | Owner of suspiciously vacant adult daycare billed Medicaid $32M while donating to Kathy Hochul, other Dems
Kathy Hochul received $55,000 in campaign contributions from social adult daycare centers (SADCs) in fraud-plagued Flushing, Queens, records show.Almost half of those donations can be linked to two men: local powerbroker Baoli Zhang, and Jiemin Shang — who own two of Flushing’s biggest daycare businesses, both of which were empty of patients when visited by The Post last week.Zhang, 69, personally donated $10,000, as well as another $5,000 through his Bao Kang Adult Day Care, financial disclosures show.Zhang’s various businesses have claimed at least $32 million from Medicaid since 2018, on behalf of tens of thousands of patients.Shang runs Livingwell Day Care, which donated $5,000 to Hochul in 2022, the same year it billed $5.8M to Medicaid.
Another $5,000 came from Finest Adult Day Care, which Shang also runs.“In 2021, [social adult daycare centers] were dying due to COVID.Someone threw them a lifeline and must have said something like, ‘Take care of me, I’ll take care of you.’ They’re making more money than ever now,” an industry source claimed to The Post.Federal figures back this up.
Business has exploded at Livingwell, which billed $114,000 in 2018, a number that increased to $8.05 million in 2024.Boa Kang went from claiming $1.5M in 2018 to 7.22M by 2024.
Monthly revenue for daycares across Flushing overall has nearly doubled compared to pre-pandemic numbers.Only nine of the city’s nearly 400 SADCs made contributions over $5,000 to Hochul’s first gubernatorial campaign in 2022.Those same nine businesses accounted for billing Medicaid for an eyepopping $49 million in 2022, The Post’s investigation found.Zhang is also founder of the Asian American Adult Daycare Association (AAADA), a nonprofit formed in 2023 as an industry advocacy group, while Shang is secretary-general.Zhang, who grew up in Beijing, is a big name in the community as he is also a world-renowned musician, described as a “master” of the erhu—a two-stringed...