Ex-St. Kate nursing dean used school funds for vacation getaways with boyfriend, latest charges say

Laura Jean Fero, the former dean of nursing at St. Catherine University, not only embezzled more than $400,000 from the school and funneled the money to her boyfriend’s phony business, she also used university funds to pay for five trips to popular vacation destinations, according to new charges filed Monday.

The latest accusations were filed in Ramsey County District Court against 56-year-old Juan Ramon Bruce of Shakopee and contend that his company “pretended to be a marketing company, but its actual purpose was to obtain misappropriated funds from St. Catherine’s.”

Bruce was charged with six counts of theft by swindle in connection with Fero allegedly siphoning the St. Paul private school’s money from 2020 until last summer. Fero was identically charged last week after the university said it found that she embezzled roughly $412,000 through contracts the school had with JB & Associates.

Authorities arrested Fero on Wednesday at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and she was released on a personal recognizance bond. She is due back in court June 7 and has been asked for a response to the allegations.

Fero lives in Florida, where she is dean of nursing for a university under AdventHealth, a private system of more than 20 hospitals and emergency rooms in the Orlando metropolitan area.

Bruce has a June 6 court date and remains jailed in lieu of $75,000 bail. Dennis Gerhardstein, spokesman for the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office, said the prosecution during a hearing Monday “requested $100,000 [bail], noting unique flight risk concerns based on information provided by police.”

The defense explained in court Monday the perceived flight risk stemmed from his arrest at his home Friday, where his car was packed with his son’s belongings. He explained that he was getting ready to go to his son’s graduation and that the vehicle wasn’t operational.

Court records do not list an attorney for Fero or Bruce.

The additional allegations against Fero and Bruce include that she used a St. Catherine procurement card to pay for airline tickets for them between June 2021 and last August to Miami, Atlanta, Phoenix, Cancun and Orlando along with paying for rental cars and lodging while in those cities.

St. Paul police have classified more than $18,000 of that spending as “not legitimate” and another $8,000 as being of “questionable legitimacy,” the charges against Bruce read.

University spokeswoman Sarah Voigt on Monday continued to decline to comment about the allegations. She did confirm that a message from the office of President Becky Roloff was sent late Friday afternoon to the St. Catherine community advising, “Please carefully consider any discussion that you might have about [Fero] and the alleged conduct. We want to ensure that nothing said or done by anyone at St. Catherine University jeopardizes the case that investigators have been carefully building. Do not forward this message outside the University.”

According to the charges last week and again in the criminal complaint filed against Bruce:

The university determined that “Fero engaged in transferring significant funds to Bruce over multiple years while Bruce provided little to no services to the university,” the charging document read.

Emails between Fero and Bruce show they had a romantic relationship throughout the time the school was doing business with his company. The school has a conflict-of-interest policy that would have forbidden such a relationship.

After Fero left St. Catherine, the school requested details from JB & Associates on the nature of the work it did. But Bruce submitted reports “that differed significantly from the reports he had previously sent to Fero directly while he was working for St. Catherine’s,” the charges noted.

Fero told police she didn’t believe the school’s conflict-of-interest policy applied, believing it covered only married couples. She also admitted to “editing” some of the documents JB & Associates submitted.