Boyfriend of former St. Kate’s dean also now faces charges of swindling $400K from the school

Nick Ferraro, Pioneer Press
Updated ·3 min read
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Prosecutors on Monday charged the boyfriend of a former St. Catherine University dean for his role in the couple’s alleged embezzling of more than $400,000 from the St. Paul school through bogus contracts with his phony healthcare consulting company.

Juan Ramon Bruce, 56, of Shakopee faces the same charges as former university nursing dean Laura Jean Fero: six counts of aiding and abetting theft by swindle. Bruce, who was arrested Friday, appeared before a Ramsey County District judge on Monday and remained jailed in lieu of $100,000 bail.

Monday’s charges allege investigators determined that Bruce’s company “pretended to be a marketing company, but its actual purpose was to obtain misappropriated funds from St. Catherine.”

The charges also allege a review of Fero’s university credit card showed she racked up $26,191 in expenses — airfare, rental cars, hotels and airport parking — for trips with Bruce to Miami, Atlanta and Phoenix in 2021, Cancun in 2022 and Orlando last year.

Fero, 54, who now lives in Apopka, Fla., and is dean of nursing and chief academic nurse at AdventHealth University in Orlando, was arrested Wednesday and charged in Ramsey County District Court on Friday. She posted a $75,000 bond and was released from the county jail ahead of a June 7 court hearing.

Court records do not list an attorney for Fero or Bruce, who police said Monday declined to be interviewed by investigators and asked for an attorney.

The criminal complaints against the couple allege Fero entered into contracts with Bruce and his company, JB & Associates LLC., between August 2020 and August 2023. The work purportedly included outreach, marketing and market and cost analysis for continuing education development and delivery for St. Catherine.

The charges allege Fero “transferred significant funds to Bruce over multiple years while Bruce provided little or no services to the university.”

The charges further allege that Fero and Bruce were “explicitly working together to take money from the university by abusing Fero’s position of trust and authority.”

Fero was St. Catherine’s dean of nursing from June 2019 through Aug. 28, 2023, when she left for AdventHealth University. It was then that St. Catherine officials discovered missing funds and started an internal investigation, the charges say. The university reported its findings to St. Paul police in late November.

A St. Paul police review of financial records associated with Bruce’s contracts revealed his company received six payments from St. Catherine, totaling $412,644, between Aug. 31, 2020, and Aug. 23, 2023.

The investigations by St. Catherine and police turned up emails between Fero and Bruce indicating they coordinated in submitting reports so he would continue receiving university funds, the complaint alleges. The emails consisted of Fero sending him information to include in his reports and invoices.

In an interview with police, Fero initially said she met Bruce from a “cold call” to St. Catherine about medical supplies and that they were not in a relationship prior to the university contracting with him. Fero later said she had met him on the dating website Elitesingles.com and that she believed the relationship did not constitute a conflict of interest.

Fero admitted to “editing” documents that Bruce submitted to St. Catherine, the charges say.

Bruce also had a St. Catherine’s email account while he was under contract with St. Catherine. After Fero left, Bruce sent an email from his university account to Fero’s personal email with a purported final report.

A St. Catherine spokeswoman declined to comment on Fero’s charges last week and again Monday. An AdventHealth spokeswoman declined to comment on Fero’s status with the university last week, saying it “does not comment on personnel or pending legal matters.”

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