When assisted-living facility owner Linda Cole phoned another owner in the hope of buying his Internet domain name, the man told her he found new residents the old-fashioned way: He paid for them.

“You do realize that’s illegal,” Cole said she told the man.

But his response was blunt: He was forced to pay for bodies, otherwise he wouldn’t fill his beds, she recalled.

During the final meeting of the state’s ALF work group Monday afternoon, owners and advocates for residents — many from South Florida — said the practice of paying kickbacks to fill their homes was rampant throughout the state, even though so-called “patient brokering” has been illegal in Florida since 1996.

The problem was among dozens recounted during the packed session at Florida International University before the task force members, who are expected to offer solutions to an industry that has been under fire with revelations of squalor and abuse in assisted-living facilities across the state.

The group — which includes owners, elder advocates and lawmakers appointed by Gov. Rick Scott — was created in May after a Miami Herald series, Neglected to Death, showed the state had allowed dozens of facilities to stay open, even after they had been caught abusing and neglecting residents to death.

The series prompted a Miami-Dade grand jury to launch an investigation last month into conditions at facilities, including chronically troubled homes and shoddy state enforcement.

Though Monday’s meeting was dominated by pleas from facility owners who do not want the task force to press for more-stringent regulation and punishment, panel members perked up when several providers talked about illegal payments and kickbacks corrupting the industry.

One provider explained it this way: Contractors handling patient discharges for clinics will agree to place the patients in an ALF in exchange for secret payments.

Under questioning by state Sen. Ronda Storms, Cole, who owns an AL in Titusville, said she has “known about [the practice] for a long time. People are afraid to say something. If you come forward, that avenue will be shut off, and you will have nobody in your facility.”

Storms, a Republican from Valrico and an outspoken critic of rogue ALF caretakers, referred to people who peddle residents to ALF operators as “black market social workers,” and recommended that the state do a better job of cracking down on the practice.

The group’s interest in corruption comes two months after several ALF operators and halfway-house owners were indicted by a federal grand jury in Miami in the nation’s largest Medicare mental health care fraud case. The charges: taking kickbacks for steering their residents to fraudulent mental health clinics in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

The task force could bring up the issue with the governor’s office as it continues to consider a host of recommendations that will be passed on to legislators considering sweeping changes in Florida’s ALF law.

One by one, owners came to the microphone on Monday to vent their frustrations over proposed regulations and a lack of state funding that they said threatens the industry. “We should not all be penalized for the horrors that are out there,” said the owner of a six-bed facility.

Miami-Dade ALF owner Jose Duasso said he was already receiving intense scrutiny from the state. “AHCA should not be my adversary. AHCA should be my partner. We’re in this together,” he said of Florida’s regulator, the Agency for Health Care Administration.