INDEPENDENCE - A Baton Rouge businessman who moved more than 800 nursing home residents into a makeshift shelter during Hurricane Ida is now facing criminal charges in the ill-fated evacuation nearly a year later.

Bob Dean Jr., 68, is charged with eight felony counts of cruelty to persons with infirmities, five felony counts of Medicaid fraud, and two felony counts of obstruction of justice. More than a dozen people died in the weeks after the evacuation in late August, with the state deeming five of them "storm-related deaths."

Ahead of Hurricane Ida, Dean's nursing homes moved their residents to the warehouse in Tangipahoa Parish to wait out the storm. Conditions quickly deteriorated inside the shelter, and Dean's employees reportedly stopped state health inspectors from checking the property.

Law enforcement agencies eventually had to rescue hundreds of people from inside days after the storm.

The state later revoked licenses from the nursing homes involved in the evacuations.

Read the full announcement from the Louisiana Attorney General's Office below.

Attorney General Jeff Landry’s Office has arrested Bob Glynn Dean, Jr. – the owner of seven Louisiana nursing homes that evacuated to a warehouse in Independence prior to Hurricane Ida. Dean, 68 of Thomaston (GA), has been charged in Tangipahoa Parish with eight felony counts of Cruelty to Persons with Infirmities, five felony counts of Medicaid Fraud, and two felony counts of Obstruction of Justice.

The arrest comes after a joint investigation by the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) and his Louisiana Bureau of Investigations (LBI) revealed Dean refused to move his residents out of the warehouse following Hurricane Ida, billed Medicaid for dates his residents were not receiving proper care, and engaged in conduct intended to intimidate or obstruct public health officials and law enforcement

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office of Inspector General assisted the MFCU and LBI. Additional legal action may be filed in the future as the investigation by the Attorney General’s Office is still ongoing.

Dean bonded out of jail Wednesday afternoon. It is unclear what his bond was set at.