Unlicensed Personal Home Care Operator Abandons Charges

November 15, 2011

Relatives of four mentally unstable adults were horrified to discover that the four men were abandoned by their personal home care operators in an empty house. Further investigation uncovered that Marlo Kenneth Yarbrough, the owner of the home care, had abandoned his charges when questioned by the police as to why he was caring for adults without obtaining a necessary Bethlehem, GA business license.

City officials have been on the lookout for unlicensed home cares in the past few weeks. Upon discovery that Yarbrough did not have a home care license, authorities demanded that he close up.

Merritt Melancon reports in OnlineAthens, “When code enforcement officers threatened to shut down the care home, Yarbrough dropped off the four adults — ages 32, 19, 57 and 26 — at the empty house with a bag of fast food.” Yarbrough continued did not inform the adults’ relatives and continued to collect the $600 - $1,000 he had been charging monthly for the care of each adult.

After living in the home for an undisclosed amount of time, one of the adults contacted a relative to complain about “no food, no heat and no medicine.”

Yarbrough is now behind bars for neglecting his charges and operating a business without a license.

According to Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith, “Yarbrough and his wife allegedly were running a barber shop and a personal care home out of their house on Otis Drive. They claimed they didn’t know they needed a business license or a state permit to run the personal care home.”

Services provided by unlicensed businesses may be cheaper, but studies have proven that what one will save in cash will be made up in heartache.

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