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Stephanie and Scott Roskovski, who embezzled at least $1.3 million from Butler Health System, may have to pay more money back to the hospital network as a result of their court filings.

In a hearing in motions court Thursday morning, Butler County Common Pleas Court senior Judge Robert Yeats ordered the Roskovskis to show the court why they should not have to pay the health system’s legal fees incurred while defending the Roskovskis’ motion to revisit their payments to BHS.

The Roskovskis agreed in 2017 to pay BHS $470,000 by mid-2020, according to court filings, and paid roughly $235,000 of that total. The funds the Roskovskis owe to BHS through the 2017 agreement are separate from the roughly $750,000 owed to BHS and the roughly $540,000 owed to the Internal Revenue Service in restitution from their federal criminal convictions.

In April 2019, Scott Roskovski, left, and his wife, Stephanie, were charged with embezzling $1.3 million from BHS. The Center Township couple was accused of defrauding the health care system between 2011 and 2017 while Stephanie Roskovski was employed as chief operating officer at the facility. Butler Eagle file photo

The Roskovskis’ motion, which was filed by their former attorney David Valencik before he withdrew from the case, sought to offset the nearly $300,000 the convicted felons still owe to BHS in a payment agreement by $50,000, which Stephanie Roskovski claims the hospital owed to her in unpaid vacation time.

Jay Martinsen, a Pittsburgh attorney representing the hospital, responded to the motion by informing Valencik that the Roskovskis’ claim is without merit and at odds with 100 years of Pennsylvania law. Martinsen told Valencik he would seek sanctions against the Roskovskis if he didn’t withdraw the motion, according to court filings.

“They have made, frankly, the scandalous statement that they, who stole $1.3 million, or I should say, at least $1.3 million,” were defrauded by the hospital because of the vacation time issue, Martinsen told the judge Thursday.

Scott Roskovski, Valencik claimed in a motion to withdraw as attorney, didn’t give his assent to withdraw the motion. After that, the Roskovskis and Valencik agreed to end the attorney’s services.

As a result, the Roskovskis are without legal representation. Their daughter appeared in court Thursday on their behalf, but as she is not an attorney Yeats did not permit her to argue for her parents.

Martinsen told Yeats the Roskovskis are without an attorney due to their own behavior.

“This is not an issue that they can’t find a lawyer,” he said. “It’s that no lawyer is going to want to represent them.”

Yeats ruled against the Roskovskis’ motion to open the judgment against them for $289,775 due to the vacation time issue, as well as a later motion to add one more basis to open the judgment, in which the convicted felons claimed the hospital did not inform them they had referred the embezzlement to law enforcement.

The first motion was denied due to the century of precedent, Yeats ruled.

The second motion was denied on six bases. First, the Roskovskis did not have “clean hands,” the judge said, having embezzled $1.3 million from BHS; the hospital network also did not have a duty to tell the Roskovskis it had referred the case to law enforcement; and the Roskovskis’ attorney had every opportunity to include in the agreement that the hospital would not refer the case to law enforcement.

Additionally, the Roskovskis affirmed the agreement multiple times; they did not act promptly, having waited nearly four years to allege the agreement was invalid; and, fundamentally, they could not have their daughter file the motion as she is not an attorney, Yeats ruled.

Martinsen summed up the Roskovskis’ attempt to open the judgment as having “not even close to a scintilla of legal basis.”

Yeats also ordered the Roskovskis to answer multiple sets of interrogatories — questions asked by one party to another in a lawsuit as part of the discovery process — and ordered a corporate representative be appointed for their company, Switchback LLC, and be present for a deposition.

Stephanie Roskovski is currently incarcerated at the Federal Prison Camp, Alderson in Greenbrier County, W.Va., with an expected release date of March 2025. Scott Roskovski is serving his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, Cumberland in Allegany County, Md., through November 2022.