The adult family care home was operated by Sheryl Casale since May in a rented house at 1616 Windswept Ave. in the Four Seasons community off Immokalee Road. Casale and her Loving Care business were cited Sept. 19 after an unannounced visit one week earlier by an inspector with the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration.

But according to Casale, homeowners Tom and Shelly Colpitts sold her their own business, known as Quality Senior Living, with the assurance that all state requirements had been met.

"He defrauded me into a business he never had a license for to begin with," she said. "I'm the victim. "

State law requires anyone offering meals, overnight stays and other "personal care and services" in their home to more than two adults not related to the care providers to be licensed as operators of an assisted living facility or adult family care home. Assisted living centers generally have more residents than family care homes.

In an interview last week, Colpitts said he wasn't licensed because he and his wife looked after just two seniors, along with their own two daughters.

But on Tuesday, the state licensing agency released two "cease and desist" letters sent to Colpitts and his wife, in 1996 and 1998, ordering them to either stop caring for more than two unrelated adults in their home or else obtain the necessary license.

The first letter was sent to their home in Imperial Golf Estates; the 1998 letter was sent to their nine-bedroom home on Windswept Avenue.

A sample contract provided by Casale to the Daily News shows that Quality Senior Living billed itself to residents as a "facility licensed by the State of Florida as a standard Adult Living Facility and as such is governed by its rules and regulations. " The eight-page contract was unsigned.

Asked about the contract's licensing claim, Tom Colpitts said it "was one we were working on (while) setting up the business. "

"Any people we took care of, we told the people we were not licensed," he said.

Each time the state raised questions, Quality Senior Living reduced its number of residents to fall below the licensing threshold, Colpitts said. An AHCA spokeswoman supported that account for the 1998 violation.

"We did what we had to do," Colpitts said.

While routinely housing four or five elderly residents in the Windswept Avenue home, Colpitts described two of those people as "boarders" who didn't require extensive care, thus making him exempt from the state requirements.

But a signed rental agreement between Colpitts and Casale required her to pay $4,000 a month in rent plus, for the first year of the two-year deal, an additional $3,000 a month "for four residents. "

At the time of the state's most recent visit, Casale had five residents ranging in age from 66 to 97 living with her in the rented home.

Griffin Payne, whose 97-year-old father lived first with Colpitts and then with Casale, said he believed that Colpitts was licensed by the state. But, licensed or not, he lauded Colpitts' care for his father, who died at a nursing home several days after the state closed down the Windswept Avenue operation.

"Tom Colpitts was great to my father all these years," he said. "Maybe some people didn't have a license, but the truth of the matter is, he was getting good care. "

Payne instead directed his ire at the state investigators who evacuated his father and four other frail residents from the home, forcing local elder advocates to scramble in search of replacement beds. His father spent four nights at Naples Community Hospital before a nursing home bed could be found. Charles Payne died in the nursing home two days later.

"The state are really the bad guys," Griffin Payne said. "They basically forced him out on the street. "

A second former resident, 92-year-old Mary Braun, also died in a nursing home shortly after leaving the Windswept Avenue home, said her nephew, John Maxwell. He too lauded Colpitts for his care and compassion, regardless of the licensing issue.

"They were fabulous," he said.

Others were less complimentary of Colpitts and Casale, his successor. Charles Pollard, president of the Alzheimer's Support Network of Collier County, said his organization received "numerous complaints" against the home while it was under both operators' control.

When he initiated a formal complaint with the state in May once Casale had taken over the business, an AHCA manager replied that only two residents were observed at the time of the visit, making any enforcement action impossible.

Harold Williams, the AHCA official, also noted in a June 3 letter to Pollard that Casale had contacted state offices to obtain the necessary state license. But AHCA spokeswoman Kim Reed said the agency never received a formal application from either Casale or Colpitts.

"Nobody would take any action against them," said Pollard. "It was a pretty scary situation. "

Colpitts, who has moved back into the Windswept Avenue home, said he is getting out of the adult care business to spend more time with his family. Casale, though, continues to care for two elderly charges “ outside the purview of state authorities.