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Hospital chain sues CEO blaming him for bankruptcy

Hospital chain sues CEO blaming him for bankruptcy

Daily Mail​6 days ago
Steward Health Care is suing its 'greedy' former CEO, claiming he pilfered millions from the hospital chain as it went bankrupt. In new filings the hospital chain claims its founder and former chief executive Ralph de la Torre (pictured) devised a scheme to plunder the company of hundreds of millions of dollars that directly led to its collapse.
The hospital chain alleges that de la Torre and his team of executives defrauded the company of $262 million and wasted a further $1.1 billion on buying up overpriced hospitals in Florida. The complaint alleges that the catastrophic investments were made to fulfil de la Torre's 'personal desire to build a hospital empire,' a reckless move that involved overpaying about $200 million for the properties.
Steward, which is now being run by an independent administrator after filing for bankruptcy in 2024, is attempting to claw back some of the money from its former bosses to help pay off its debts. De la Torre has become the poster boy for corporate greed rot at the center of the struggling healthcare system. 'Through their greed and bad faith misconduct, [these former insiders] operated Steward with the aim of enriching themselves at the expense of the Company, its creditors, and the patients and communities that Steward served,' the complaint states. 'These insiders pilfered Steward's assets for their own material gain, while leaving the Company and its hospitals perpetually undercapitalized and insolvent.'
The most recent filings also claim that de la Torre and other executives paid themselves a $111 million dividend in 2021, despite knowing that Steward was in trouble as early as 2016. De la Torre founded Steward in Boston in 2010, growing it into the country's largest private for-profit hospital chain, the Boston Globe reported.
It rapidly bought up hospitals on a trajectory that became unsustainable, plunging it into dire financial straits. It eventually filed for bankruptcy in May last year while operating 30 hospitals across eight states.
As it moves through the bankruptcy process Steward has closed two hospitals in Massachusetts - Carney Hospital in Dorchester and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer - and sold off a further six. Filings later revealed by The Wall Street Journal showed that after de la Torre took over majority ownership of the hospital chain in 2020, he received personal payments of at least $250 million over the next four years.
He went on to use the money to purchase a $7.2million 500-acre ranch in Waxahachie, Texas, and a 190-foot, $40 million yacht. Further to this de la Torre was revealed to own a 11,108-square-foot mansion in Dallas, valued at more than $7 million.
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Beach city scraps 10,000 new homes and plans F1-style track instead that locals rage is 'dumb' and 'desperate'
Beach city scraps 10,000 new homes and plans F1-style track instead that locals rage is 'dumb' and 'desperate'

Daily Mail​

time22 minutes ago

  • Daily Mail​

Beach city scraps 10,000 new homes and plans F1-style track instead that locals rage is 'dumb' and 'desperate'

Locals in a popular New Jersey beach city are enraged after it ditched plans to build 10,000 new homes for a 'dumb' and 'desperate' $3.4 billion F1-style racetrack. Atlantic City government officials have moved forward with the redevelopment of Bader Field, a shuttered airport about an hour outside of Philadelphia, after plans for the new racetrack were officially approved on July 16. The idea to take over the abandoned city-owned airport, which shut down in 2006, first started in 2022 when Bart Blatstein, the CEO of Tower Investments, Inc. and owner of Showboat Atlantic City, said his company and Atlantic City would collaborate to create a massive residential community. The proposed $3 billion development, dubbed 'Casa Mar,' was set to be built on 140 acres with 10,000 residential units, 20 acres of trails, amenities and parks and 400,000 square-feet of retail and office space - but that plan has since been wiped. Instead, a 2.5-mile racetrack, headed by real estate development company Deem Enterprises, will take its place. The massive raceway, said to be a 'game changer' by Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small Sr., is expected to take six to nine years to complete. It will be surrounded by retail businesses and condominiums in the community that is home to beaches, a bustling boardwalk and casinos. 'We're more confident than ever that we have the funds, Small Sr., an Atlantic City native who has been in office since 2019, told NJ Advance Media. '[DEEM] has been vetted, and just getting a $3.4-plus billion project on the ratable base is a complete game changer.' While the mayor, who was embroiled in a child abuse scandal involving his wife and daughter last year, and other government officials are thrilled about the new plan, Atlantic City locals are not happy with it. 'Atlantic City leadership is so desperate that they will support any development offer no matter how stupid it is,' a Facebook user wrote. Another said: 'What a joke! Want to really do something with the land? Dig canals and sell off lots and watch the ratepayers flood in!' 'Building that into a racetrack has to be the dumbest idea in the world,' someone else posted. A resident stressed that the heavily populated and touristy area is already filled with loud noises, so a racetrack would not be ideal. 'If people are bothered by the noise from beach concerts, the noise from the screaming F1 race cars would be unbearable!,' they said. While many are not happy with the development, others appear to be excited for the new track. 'Hell yes,' one simply wrote. Somebody else said: 'Do it!' Another said: 'Excellent' alongside several thumbs up and heart emojis. Meanwhile, a majority of people are not convinced the racetrack will ever be completed. 'They've been talking about it for years... highly doubt it'll ever happen,' wrote a user. 'This is all BS. Every few years this story comes out,' someone else shared. Another posted: 'I'm gonna go ahead and predict this will never happen.' Blatstein told the outlet three years ago that he saw room for growth in the beach city after realizing that other Garden State beach towns have booming populations compared to Atlantic City. 'So what really is needed here is a new plan, a new way of living, a new opportunity for people to come to Atlantic City,' Blatstein said. DEEM Enterprises, a Los Angeles and Atlantic City-based company, first announced the proposal in February of that year. The company has a tentative deal with the city to sell the vacant airfield for $100 million in exchange the real estate developer would donate $15 million for a community center. 'We don't have a recreation center of our town,' Small Sr. explained. 'We use the schools and different things like that.'

The heartbreak of watching a parent fall for fraud: ‘Dad, this is a scam – have you given her money?'
The heartbreak of watching a parent fall for fraud: ‘Dad, this is a scam – have you given her money?'

The Guardian

time24 minutes ago

  • The Guardian

The heartbreak of watching a parent fall for fraud: ‘Dad, this is a scam – have you given her money?'

Bomba wasn't the first, but she exploded in our lives like a digital grenade. She's not real, I told my dad – then in his early seventies. I was in Australia at this time, where I've lived for the last 13 years. Physically speaking, he was still in California – but within himself he was adrift in a rapidly sinking lifeboat, floating in a morass of debris primarily of his own doing. But it must be said before I go further: my dad isn't the bad guy in this story. Not this time. At times, he was the bad guy in other people's stories– but that is another story. If she's not real, he countered, then how is it that we've spoken on the phone? That we video-chatted? I'll admit that threw me. In most catfishing stories the catfish goes to great lengths to avoid video chatting. But my dad being the unreliable source he was, I wasn't entirely sure he was being truthful about that detail. It was a heartbreaking thing to have to break down for my dad. My dad – who had once been a handsome, charismatic Lothario with swagger, with game – now had to be told by both of his daughters that this chic Bomba was 100% not real, not into him, not what or who she says she is. He didn't believe us. Bomba had presented herself, via Facebook, as a widow living in Naples, Florida. She and her late husband had been in the gemstone business, and she was a millionaire. A lonely millionaire at that, looking for love and companionship. She's not real, Dad. I begged him to understand. But I've seen her bank statements. Why would she show you her bank statements? Because her money is tied up in Europe, she can't access it, but she wanted me to know she has it. Dad. This is a scam. Have you given her money? Did she ask for money? Dad? DAD? Needless to say, he didn't believe me. The thing about my dad and money is that he had lived a life of great abundance and great scarcity. He'd been born into 1950's Midwestern high-society, the son of a department store titan, and then – as many of his cohort did in the sixties and seventies, he 'dropped out.' He spent most of his twenties and early thirties in the Motown music scene – he was a talented saxophone player – and in that scene he became addicted to heroin and other substances. He was a low to mid-level drug dealer himself and I am pretty sure there are things I still don't know about that time. What I do know – because I lived it – is that, while he was never what you'd call 'straight' – he did straighten out. He began the long process of untangling himself from heroin after I was born, but he'd never kick his dependence on alcohol and weed – and that taste for opioids would come back for its pound of flesh. He aimed higher. He got 'good' jobs. He started businesses. He achieved as an athlete, and was the basketball coach at my high school. For a period of time he, and those around him, flourished. He had money. And then he lost it, along with his second marriage, his house in the California mountains, his fancy RV … and his pride. By the time Bomba appeared, he was still nursing the faint hope that he might – somehow, some way – get it all back again. Even though by this time he'd burnt so many bridges he was practically an island, and was thoroughly physically incapacitated by the severe scoliosis he'd always outrun as a younger, fitter man. For the pain that the gin couldn't help, his doctors prescribed OxyContin. We'll get to that. He never admitted to sending Bomba money, but my gut says he did. I'd hoped maybe that would be the last scam, but then this happened: my dad called one afternoon to tell me that he was going to buy my husband a better boat. How, I asked? Because I've won the lottery, he said. My heart sank. Dad. It's not real. He forwarded me the documents he'd been sent – on Facebook – by some guy, let's call him Bob. One was a 'winning certificate' telling him that he'd won US$580m. I pointed out to him that I couldn't find anything online to verify it – and plenty of things to alert us to the fact this was a scam. Other things he forwarded me were full of spelling errors and other 'tells'. Still, he was intractable and unpersuadable. By this time – the time that my sister and I refer to as the whole lottery thing – or just the scam – we knew, to the penny, what my dad had left in the bank – which was about $50,000. His social security checks were paltry, and he was carefully rationing what he had left on fast-food, cheap gin, weed, and dog food and meds for his golden retriever, Sonny. What happened next took place over a period of about six weeks … maybe more, maybe less – to be honest, it's all a trauma-blur. Like clockwork, the scammers told my dad that in order to receive his winnings he had to cover the costs of the paperwork, transfer fees, insurance, and other vague items – that bill was around US$10k, give or take. He paid it. Then he was told that because they'd be delivering the $580m dollars in cash to his doorstep, he'd need to cover yet more bank fees, and the cost of the delivery itself, and various other dubious requirements – to the tune of another $10k or so. He paid that, too. When the money didn't arrive and the scammers went quiet, my dad finally understood he'd been scammed (or so we believed). The FBI got involved, only to tell him that his money was, essentially, unrecoverable. They told him the obvious: don't give them anything more and stop contact. This is where things get really weird and where my dad's fragmenting mind and broken spirit came into stark relief. Now that my dad knew he'd been scammed he was understandably furious. But because of his own days as a low-level crim who had engaged in his own scams (there's a weird story about a fake timeshare business he was a part of, and something to do with diamonds) – he was determined that he'd out-crim the crims. Somewhere in this timeline my dad had been hospitalised for the third or fourth time in as many months. We'd recently been told that he had alcohol induced brain atrophy. And there was all the oxy. And the deep well of anger, sorrow and fear. Somewhere in this timeline I'd had to call the police multiple times from my home in Australia and send them to check on my dad – who had, again, threatened suicide. Against this backdrop – my dad resumed communication with the people he knew had already stolen around US$20k from him – nearly half of all the money he had left in the world – the people the FBI had verified were, indeed, scammers. Weird, scary things happened. He threatened them. They threatened him. At one point, a plan was made to meet in a park after dark where, apparently, they were going to give him money. To this day I'm unsure as to whether my dad did, indeed, go to a park at night, wander around in his painful gait, confused, ashamed and angry, his pants too big for his dwindling frame – an image that cuts me to the bone. I was so angry with him. He was honest with me about not having cut communication – and then he relayed the fact that they were, again, asking him for money. It was, essentially, to cover the same kinds of fake costs that he'd already paid. But this time, he was sure they were going to make him whole. So he gave them the rest. All of it. Every last cent. In the last week of his life he was texting friends and family asking for $300 to send to the scammers for the petrol they said they needed to drive him his millions. In the last days, he was, quite literally, penniless. A few days after my dad died the scammers found my sister and me. We typed our outrage into the ether, screamed into the void, told them that they had blood on their hands – but we know that there was not a single person on the other end of that message. There are whole fleets. My dad was likely talking to multiple people – many of whom are probably living their own tragedies, in service of traffickers. Knowing that our experience wasn't uncommon was a cold comfort. We knew we weren't the only adult children grappling with the devastating fallout of financial scams. The scammers my dad encountered were not sophisticated, he suspended his own disbelief wilfully. But many scammers are sophisticated – their scams don't have spelling errors and inconsistencies. With AI, they are getting harder and harder for people to detect. Especially people who aren't tech savvy. As their children and loved ones, talking to them about changing their passwords and not clicking on links feels like the epitome of taking a knife to a gun fight. Financial scams aren't the only scams – I've come to see the other 'scams' that, over time, chipped away at my dad. Fox News convinced him that all of his many troubles could be blamed on immigrants, feminism, China … others. The Maga cult that conned him into thinking that Donald Trump would usher in a new era of success aimed at those who most needed it. The big pharma scam that told my dad that he could manage OxyContin – even though he'd told them he couldn't. These days, I've come to fear that the entire American project is a scam. The call is no longer only coming from shadowy figures on Facebook, it's coming from inside the house – the White House – with the President himself hawking gold bibles and bizarre coins and EFTs. My dad fell for all of that, too. There is a character in my new novel, Mother Tongue, named Eric. Eric has fallen for the Maga scam, for the Fox News scam, the Christian Patriarchy scam … but he goes down a far, far darker path than my dad did. Creating Eric was cathartic, as was creating his daughter, Jenny – who, like my sister and me, felt the sting of knowing that her father's view of the world, of women, of humanity, was so painfully distant from her own – and that it was a worldview that, if realised to its fullest potential, would cost her dearly. When I first began to draft the character of Eric, I thought I was writing about something rare, drawn from the distinct and precise experiences I'd had with my own dad. By the time I finished, it was clear that I was writing about something many children are grappling with when it comes to their susceptible parents, and my heart breaks for them, too. Mother Tongue by Naima Brown (Pan MacMillan, $16.99) is out now

Out-gunned Europe accepts least-worst US trade deal
Out-gunned Europe accepts least-worst US trade deal

Reuters

time24 minutes ago

  • Reuters

Out-gunned Europe accepts least-worst US trade deal

LONDON, July 27 (Reuters) - In the end, Europe found it lacked the leverage to pull Donald Trump's America into a trade pact on its terms and so has signed up to a deal it can just about stomach - albeit one that is clearly skewed in the U.S.'s favour. As such, Sunday's agreement on a blanket 15% tariff after a months-long stand-off is a reality check on the aspirations of the 27-country European Union to become an economic power able to stand up to the likes of the United States or China. The cold shower is all the more bracing given that the EU has long portrayed itself as an export superpower and champion of rules-based commerce for the benefit both of its own soft power and the global economy as a whole. For sure, the new tariff that will now be applied is a lot more digestible than the 30% "reciprocal" tariff which Trump threatened to invoke in a few days. While it should ensure Europe avoids recession, it will likely keep its economy in the doldrums: it sits somewhere between two tariff scenarios the European Central Bank last month forecast would mean 0.5-0.9% economic growth this year compared to just over 1% in a trade tension-free environment. But this is nonetheless a landing point that would have been scarcely imaginable only months ago in the pre-Trump 2.0 era, when the EU along with much of the world could count on U.S. tariffs averaging out at around 1.5%. Even when Britain agreed a baseline tariff of 10% with the United States back in May, EU officials were adamant they could do better and - convinced the bloc had the economic heft to square up to Trump - pushed for a "zero-for-zero" tariff pact. It took a few weeks of fruitless talks with their U.S. counterparts for the Europeans to accept that 10% was the best they could get and a few weeks more to take the same 15% baseline which the United States agreed with Japan last week. "The EU does not have more leverage than the U.S., and the Trump administration is not rushing things," said one senior official in a European capital who was being briefed on last week's negotiations as they closed in around the 15% level. That official and others pointed to the pressure from Europe's export-oriented businesses to clinch a deal and so ease the levels of uncertainty starting to hit businesses from Finland's Nokia ( opens new tab to Swedish steelmaker SSAB ( opens new tab. "We were dealt a bad hand. This deal is the best possible play under the circumstances," said one EU diplomat. "Recent months have clearly shown how damaging uncertainty in global trade is for European businesses." That imbalance - or what the trade negotiators have been calling "asymmetry" - is manifest in the final deal. Not only is it expected that the EU will now call off any retaliation and remain open to U.S. goods on existing terms, but it has also pledged $600 billion of investment in the United States. The time-frame for that remains undefined, as do other details of the accord for now. As talks unfolded, it became clear that the EU came to the conclusion it had more to lose from all-out confrontation. The retaliatory measures it threatened totalled some 93 billion euros - less than half its U.S. goods trade surplus of nearly 200 billion euros. True, a growing number of EU capitals were also ready to envisage wide-ranging anti-coercion measures that would have allowed the bloc to target the services trade in which the United States had a surplus of some $75 billion last year. But even then, there was no clear majority for targeting the U.S. digital services which European citizens enjoy and for which there are scant homegrown alternatives - from Netflix (NFLX.O), opens new tab to Uber (UBER.N), opens new tab to Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab cloud services. It remains to be seen whether this will encourage European leaders to accelerate the economic reforms and diversification of trading allies to which they have long paid lip service but which have been held back by national divisions. Describing the deal as a painful compromise that was an "existential threat" for many of its members, Germany's BGA wholesale and export association said it was time for Europe to reduce its reliance on its biggest trading partner. "Let's look on the past months as a wake-up call," said BGA President Dirk Jandura. "Europe must now prepare itself strategically for the future - we need new trade deals with the biggest industrial powers of the world."

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