GENESEE COUNTY/Q. & A. with Dr. George Vito, who is seeking Genesee County Legislature District 5 seat

Dr. George Vito is a semi-retired podiatrist who has an office in the Village of Le Roy, where he resides. He recently sought the endorsement of the Genesee County Republican Committee for the District 5 seat (Town of Le Roy) on the Genesee County Legislature.

Neither he nor incumbent Rochelle (Shelley) Stein received that endorsement.

Link to Rochelle (Shelley) Stein interview:GENESEE COUNTY/Q.& A. with Rochelle Stein, who is seeking Genesee County Legislature District 5 seat – Video News Service

Dr. Vito did receive the endorsement of the Genesee County Conservative Party, but that support was rescinded when news of his past legal issues, which include a judgment against him for malpractice and a bankruptcy fraud conviction.

Reporter Mike Pettinella sat down with Dr. Vito for Video News Service on Friday, Feb. 21 to talk about his past (and current) legal issues and about his quest for the legislative seat.

Q. What made you get into politics? You have never been involved in politics, correct?

A. That’s correct. I have not been involved in politics but talking to the local people – seeing that there may be an opportunity – and looking at, historically, what has been done in this Le Roy area, the people I believe have not been served properly.

The article that came out last week (on The Batavian), I have not read it, because all that was was a character bashing. And if you would like to ask any questions about that, I have no problem with that … This is about the issues; it’s about what the people need.

Things have been going on for about eight or nine years that have been masked. There has not been transparency at all. Because of the clout and position that she (Rochelle Stein, incumbent Town of Le Roy, District 5, representative on the Genesee County Legislature), she has control. Too much control.

It’s a perfect storm where if you have the same person collecting the money, the same person distributing the money and the same person writing the checks, there’s no transparency – and there has been none. The tail has been wagging the dog. The dog wags the tail and the dog is the people of Le Roy District 5.

Q. What gives you the credentials or the ability to make a difference in Le Roy? Do you feel you know the community well enough since you really haven’t been here that long?

A. I’ve been here about four or five years but that does not preclude me from learning; I’m a quick study. I’ve had a medical degree, law degree and multiple master’s (degrees) and all that, so I can learn. I can put things together pretty quickly.

There are a lot of working parts that are going on – the STAMP pipeline to Orleans County project, with taxes, with the water pipelines. There’s a lot going on that the people know bits and pieces of but there’s a glass ceiling. We’re only allowed so much information but not over and above.

A prime example is STAMP under the GCEDC (Genesee County Economic Development Center). Who’s on the board of that? Shelley Stein. In the past three or four years, she was also on the board of the grant committee, where she and her brother-in-law ran that in order to get grants. She got multiple grants.

Q. You must have known getting into this that the legal issues from the past were going to come out.

A, It’s not about ‘coming out.’ I disclosed at that (Genesee County) Republican Committee meeting (on Feb. 11). I was not allowed to be in the room when it started. So, I waited two hours. During that time, Shelley was in the room and she was going table to table to table politicking.

Q. How do you know that?

A. Because people inside told me what she was doing. I have sources, too. When I came in, I gave a nice spiel and disclosed everything. I told them right off the bat – these are my issues, this is what I had. I wanted to get that out in the open.

Her people, the former sheriff (Gary Maha) stands up and says, ‘Isn’t it true that you’re a convicted felon?’ I said, ‘I just said I was. Yes, I am.’ I think she planted him just to embarrass me. He was going to ask that question anyway.

Then, one of the committee members asked if I could (legally) run for office. I said look at the state statue. Nothing precludes me from running with a felony. If you have certain felonies, you have to run later than 10 years. I don’t fall into that category.

Q. How did you get into these legal troubles? You were a practicing podiatrist in Georgia but where are you from originally?

A. I am from Rochester, New York, and I went to med school in Iowa and I did my residency down in Georgia. That residency was the number one residency in the country for reconstructive surgery of the foot, ankle and leg.

It’s a different state law in Georgia than it is in New York. We were basically orthopedic surgeons in Georgia. Because of my specialized training after I graduated from med school and my residency … and I did a lot of work in Russia, where they have the best in the world for a certain procedure for trauma and leg lengthening and such, I opened up a leg lengthening center in Georgia.

Usually, leg lengthening is, for example, if you’re on a motorcycle and you broke your leg and now it’s short two or three inches, I would lengthen it out – bring it back to normal.

Q. Is it true that you did about 400 of these procedures and a couple or three went bad. And that’s what prompted the lawsuits?

A. Yes, it started in 2004 and the process took a while. He was a psychiatrist from California. He was 4-foot-11. History of alcoholism, sexual abuse, depression and such because of his short stature. He worked for the VA.

We evaluated him and discussed all the possible outcomes. It’s a risky procedure. We lengthened both legs at the same time. With the apparatus, the person has to lengthen his own leg. It’s a quarter-millimeter, four times a day. He went a millimeter, four times a day. So, it caused complications.

At that time, there were only two of us in the country doing these procedures. There was another doctor out of Baltimore.

He (the patient) went to see him. That doctor convinced him to sue me because my price was that procedure was substantially lower than the price of the doctor in Baltimore. This was a cash procedure. So, they went on to sue him.

Now, at that time in Georgia, a podiatrist was not able to do cosmetic surgery, whether it’s a simple toe or whatever, you couldn’t do. So, they determined that it was cosmetic even though we had substantial evidence to show it wasn’t. But the courts ruled that it was cosmetic.

Q. So, you were legally responsible?

A. I was liable. I was guilty per se, I had no defense. They sued myself and the hospital.

Q. Was this Monroe County (Ga.) Hospital?

A. No, it was Middle Georgia Hospital. Monroe County Hospital came into play when they put me in jail for civil contempt … and it was based on the attorneys who were suing me. I was sued by two attorneys out of Atlanta, and they were very, very progressive on this and very aggressive.

At this point, they awarded 3.9 million dollars. The hospital paid three million so I was only liable for $900,000. But in federal court – this was a federal case because it came out of the state of California and the amount being asked for was greater than eighty thousand. It wasn’t because of the severity and it was because of the domicile.

So then, my attorney did not file for the offset. Middle Georgia had already paid three million and Vito should have only been liable for nine hundred thousand. He did not do that.

Q. Why was that? Did he mess up?

A. He messed up. That happened. I could have settled for one hundred thousand but my attorney refused because he was at odds with the opposite side attorneys. After that, we went to war. It was terrible.

My wife was dying of cancer at that time and I had a 1-year-old son. So, I had to protect what I had so it came down to filing for bankruptcy in 2008 because they were trying to get all my assets.

The judge in the malpractice case ruled that I couldn’t give up my assets because everything was collateralized – meaning that you have a house, it’s paid for, but I also have another house and collateralized that house. Everything was tied up.

Because of that, he held me in civil contempt, not criminal, civil just because I couldn’t hand over all this money. He wanted me to dilute all of my retirement funds, which is illegal because those are protected.  So, he says, ‘No, I’m going to put you in jail. I’m going to put you in debtor’s prison.’

So, he made me sit in county jail for six months while they tried to figure out where everything was. I signed paperwork because my wife was dying and had a young son and I had to get out. I was homeless and had nowhere to go.

Q. Did your wife die during that time?

A. She died, not at that time but two or three years later. So, I got out and tried to provide a living for them and restarted the practice. But, I got back on my feet and started practicing again in North Carolina.

I filed bankruptcy in 2008. There were two questions on the bankruptcy (form) that got me in trouble. One question stated, ‘Do you own greater than 5 percent of any company?’ And I didn’t. I owned 1 percent. And, ‘What is the value of your furniture?’ I put owned 1 percent of my vehicles and such and put down a value of my furniture, and of course it is used furniture.

When I was in jail, they came in and kicked my wife and kids out of the house and took all the furniture. They took everything. Then they sold the furniture at auction and it sold for greater than the amount that I had stated. Of course it would because it was at an auction.

So, I pled guilty to one count. The sentence was a year and a day, which allowed me to get out after 80 percent of the time. I actually got out earlier and went into a halfway house in Rochester for six months and from there, I went to Jamestown (around 2016) and then I came to Batavia to practice.

Q. Are your legal problems behind you? What about a case where you were accused of not paying for products you ordered?

A. That was Legacy. That was in the past three or four years. Legacy Medical provides skin grafts for wounds. And I did a lot of work in the nursing homes. I saw about eleven hundred patients a month; a lot of wounds.

I was approached three years ago by a company in California – a subsidiary of Legacy, a distributor whose name is Brian Landow. He approached me with an offer for me to buy these grafts and you bill Medicare and when Medicare pays you, you pay us. So, we did that for about a year, year and a half.

Then, all of a sudden things went sideways because I had bought the grafts from Brian Landow in California, sent him up to 15 million dollars and he only sent 10 million to Legacy. He didn’t the rest; he ran.

Legacy then fired Landow and he ran – nobody knows where he is. So now, Legacy is trying to come after me. I said, ‘Wait, I paid.’ (That case is at the discovery stage).

Q. You’ve been embroiled in a lot of lawsuits.

A. Well, I’m in medicine. People only see the superficial. They don’t understand the stressors, they don’t understand how money is generated, they don’t understand liability, they don’t understand the process.

Q. Getting back to the political arena, neither you nor Stein received the county Republican endorsement. And the county Conservatives withdrew their endorsement of you. Have you had any discussions with any of those people since then?

A. What happened is that Julie (Carasone, chair of the Conservative Party Committee) got a call telling them to pull the support. But she didn’t go to the committee. The committee was very upset with her for what she did. This was a unilateral move based on somebody who called her and said to pull me off because Stein had reached them. That’s what Stein does. That’s her M.O.

Q. Have you ever met Shelley Stein?

A. The only time I met her was when she was standing outside the room when I was going to go in to talk to the county Republicans. I said, ‘Good evening.’ That was it. There was no conversation.

There’s no reason to get into a fight. This is professional. We’ll talk issues. And I will respond to any accusations because everything is out there. I was in a high-risk pool being sued. People would come from all over the world to have surgery that I would do. We literally changed the world of podiatry because of the advances we made but there is a risk.

Q. So, where are you at now in your life as far as your career?

A. I’m semi-retired, basically. I run a small practice and see patients a couple days a week. Property management stuff, too. My son is 18 now, a senior at Le Roy High School.

Q. The Le Roy Republican Party didn’t endorse you due to you missing the deadline but Andrew Lathan, committee chair, has publicly spoken about the need for change at the county legislature level. It’s too late for endorsements so what are your plans now?

A. I have talked to Lathan and they want change. They feel that I could be the one to make this happen. He stood up for me at the county Republican meeting and gave a nice speech, saying that the people of Le Roy should decide who they want, not the county.

He was pushing for the county committee to endorse Vito. At that meeting, they voted three times and according to people inside, I was beating her in every vote. I had more votes.

Q. But no one got the 60 percent of the vote needed for endorsement. So, what’s next?

A. (Showing this reporter, the list of all Republican Party members in the Town of Le Roy), I will go out and get the number of signatures needed and double that. We can’t start until Tuesday of next week (Feb. 25).

Q. Are you confident?

A. Very confident. Either way, we have opened the door to disclosure. Now, at this points, we’ve got issues out there. We’ve got the STAMP problem … financial disclosures. She’s on the water and soil committee to get grants and her brother-in-law is on it.

She got grants to go to her farm. She just got what – a million dollar grant.

Q. Do you know that for a fact?

A. Yes. A million dollar grant and it goes to her farm. What account does it go into? What does that grant say the money has to be used for? Where’s the accountability? And that should all be in financial disclosures and we will ask that.

There are issues at a higher level. Another issue is the water. The pipeline of the water was supposed to go in a certain direction – out north. Shelley Stein had it diverted to go under the Thruway so she could have access to that water to decrease her water bill because the water bill for farming is massive.

Q. Do you know that for a fact because you’re throwing out a lot of accusations here?

A. This is coming from a lot of reliable people.

Q. In fairness to her, she hasn’t talked about you or your past, but reportedly is trying to find out why people are not backing her.

A. You don’t think that she is tied into The Batavian? You can put two and two together, One and one makes three here. She serves on so many committees and we’re still going to break that down. Why so much power but no disclosure? She’s using political office for her financial gain and if she isn’t, we’ll see that on the financial disclosure.