As Steward empire crumbles, federal probe plods along and Ralph de la Torre attends horse festival

Boston Globe

27-03-2025

He had resigned as CEO last October amid the implosion, bankruptcy, and distress sale of the chain. But the spillover from his tenure was still evident two hours up the Florida coast, where a former Steward hospital is making plans to close, leaving a city of nearly 30,000 people without its only hospital and hundreds of employees scrambling for jobs. It has stretched to Boston and Washington, D.C., where federal prosecutors have been mulling next steps in a sprawling fraud and corruption probe.
The legal reverberations have also reached London, where federal investigators recently interviewed a whistleblower of Steward's global arm, and the island of Malta, where criminal proceedings against de la Torre and other Steward executives inch along in court.
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Outside the stables on a warm Florida morning, de la Torre, who remains in contempt of US Congress for ignoring a subpoena, lounged under a blue sky and awaited his wife's next performance in the dressage ring.
When a Spotlight Team reporter introduced herself, de la Torre mouthed an exclamation of surprise and then sped away in a pickup truck. The next day at the competition, through an intermediary, he declined an interview. Later, his attorneys made it clear he would not be commenting for this story.
De la Torre was at the helm of Steward during its meteoric rise, as it grew from a handful of Massachusetts hospitals into the nation's largest private, for-profit hospital chain. But, by many accounts, his leadership also hastened Steward's calamitous downfall, which has left a lasting bruise on the American health care system. In Massachusetts alone two hospitals have shuttered and
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And despite it all, the man who helped make — and break — Steward has carried on with the life of a very wealthy man.
Ralph de la Torre (left) watched his wife, Nicole Acosta, compete in the Global Dressage Festival in Wellington, Fla.
Last fall, when federal agents served him with a search warrant and seized his phone, de la Torre was just returning from a scuba vacation on the Dutch Caribbean island of Bonaire, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Since then, the federal probe has plodded along. There are at least two lanes of inquiry that make up the investigation, several people close to the matter have told the Globe. Prosecutors have examined potential fraud and embezzlement in the United States, homing in on executive compensation, travel, and spending. Another prong of the probe has focused on
That prosecutorial possibility was put in limbo last month when President Trump issued an executive order freezing new prosecutions and enforcement actions under the act.
Six legal experts told the Globe that a pause of the antibribery law doesn't mean investigators can't lean on domestic charges in their pursuit of former executives of the health care system.
Michael Harper, a former federal prosecutor who left the Foreign Corrupt Practices unit in 2023, said nothing in the executive order prohibits using evidence collected in a probe by the unit from being used to advance other charges.
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A spokesperson for Steward and a spokesperson for the US attorney's office in Boston both declined to comment.
The
One example recently uncovered by the Spotlight Team underscores an additional avenue that investigators could explore. According to emails reviewed by the Globe, de la Torre in 2023 made a $100,000 donation to amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research and to the Dallas Museum of Art.
De la Torre made the transaction via his personal credit card. And what seemed like an act of philanthropy secured him, his wife, Nicole Acosta, and a posse of acquaintances a so-called Diamond Table at the foundation's famous TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art gala, placing him among Lone Star state royalty; Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and Deedie Rose, the widow of the former Texas Rangers owner, were seated nearby.
In emails obtained by the Globe, de la Torre's assistant at the time asked who should receive credit for the donation.
'Mr. & Mrs. de la Torre? Steward Health Care?' she wrote.
De la Torre replied that he'd think about it.
In the end, an entity called the 'de la Torre Foundation' was named in the gala's
Nicole Acosta attended amfAR's TWO x TWO For AIDS Art Gala on October 21, 2023 in Dallas, Texas.
Kevin Tachman/amfAR/Getty Images for amfAR
A few days after making the donation, de la Torre filed for a reimbursement of the $100,000 charge from Steward Health Care, according to documents reviewed by the Globe.
Come October of 2023, de la Torre and Acosta were watching R&B star Jason Derulo croon away at the gala as Steward Health Care was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
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Experts say that such transactions — made in de la Torre's name, but funded by Steward's coffers — could expose the former executive to fraud charges, including one called criminal conversion. Under this provision, the government can prosecute those who embezzle or steal from an organization that receives more than $10,000 in federal funds each year.
'Even if he only had the money temporarily, he spent it,' said former longtime federal prosecutor Philip Urofsky, though he noted that fraud charges can take many forms.
'When you read the scope of everything that's happening at Steward, and the fallout from this kind of activity… there's got to be something wrong here,' said Karen Woody, a law professor at Washington and Lee University who focuses on white collar crime. 'None of this passes the smell test.'
More traditional health care-related charges are also avenues for prosecutors to potentially sidestep Trump's blockade of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
'It wouldn't surprise me if they're going to just refocus their energies,' said lawyer David Schumacher, who previously supervised health care prosecutions in the US attorney's office in Boston.
De la Torre in recent weeks has been living in Florida and regularly attending dressage events in which his wife competes, according to people familiar with his travels. Competition records show Acosta, who was also employed by Steward, has been riding in Wellington since January, regularly winning aboard her three horses. One of those horses, Dante,
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Acosta is listed as an 'Employee — Relative of Insider' in corporate bankruptcy filings. Internal emails show she held a role titled 'system director of facilities and real estate for Steward Health Care System.' But people familiar with her employment say her material contributions to the company were minimal.
Still, Acosta regularly took advantage of corporate perks. The Globe
Acosta declined to comment when approached at the equestrian event. She initially denied she was 'Nicole,' but later competed in the event, where an announcer identified her several times as 'Nicole Acosta.'
As de la Torre watched her compete over the weekend, scores of nurses and doctors at Steward's former Rockledge hospital were phoning lawmakers and local officials in a bid to delay the hospital's shutdown.
The 298-bed hospital, which has been open for eight decades, struggled after Steward bought it in 2017. The building fell into disrepair so severe that some upper floors became infested with thousands of bats. The sewage systems on one occasion overflowed into the sinks, nurses said.
A group, including some staff members from Orlando Health Rockledge Hospital, participated in a rally on March 21 to protest the announced upcoming closing of the hospital. The rally was held across U.S. 1 from the hospital.
MALCOLM DENEMARK/FLORIDA TODAY/MALCOLM DENEMARK/FLORIDA TODAY / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
'It was a sigh of relief when they declared bankruptcy, and we thought we were done with them,' said Dr. Saima Abbas, an infectious disease doctor at Rockledge.
After Steward's bankruptcy filing, the hospital was
sold to the local chain Orlando Health, which promised 'a new day in healthcare for residents of these communities.' The new owners made some improvements and overdue repairs to the infrastructure, said employees.
But last month, Orlando Health abruptly announced it was shuttering the hospital April 22, asserting that 'years of neglect had left the facility in such poor condition that it did not meet the system's standards for patient care environments.'
'The cost to repair and renovate Rockledge Hospital far exceeds the cost of a new, state-of-the-art hospital,' the statement added.
The news blindsided thousands of patients as well as the hospital's more than 900 employees, said Michael Bramson, a lieutenant paramedic at Brevard County Fire Rescue and president of the firefighters' union.
The county's fire rescue, which is responsible for EMS transports, takes on average 40 people to Rockledge's emergency department daily, he added. Existing hospitals in the region — the nearest of which is at least 20 minutes away — are ill-equipped to take on the additional load.
Abbas was blunt about the consequences: 'Patients are going to die in the ambulances.'
Ralph de la Torre walked back to the paddock after watching his wife, Nicole Acosta, compete in Wellington, Fla., March 7.
Orlando Health said in a statement that it is working on plans to build another hospital in the region, though it has not provided details on when or where. It also said that all Rockledge employees in good standing have been guaranteed positions elsewhere at Orlando Health, though many employees say relocating or commuting to the chain's other hospitals
Many employees set to lose their jobs blamed Steward.
'I just really can't believe the actual hubris of him,' said Nora George, a longtime ICU nurse, when she learned de la Torre was nearby at the equestrian event. 'I'm out here working on my days off, which will soon be every day, and he's gallivanting around.'
Hanna Krueger can be reached at