Ex-South Florida hospital CEO accused of funneling $14M for ‘lavish lifestyle’
Palmetto General and other South Florida hospitals are caught in the crosshairs of a legal showdown between two health executives that began earlier this year and is getting messier.
Michael “Mike” Sarian, the founder and former CEO of Healthcare Systems of America-Florida LLC, is facing another lawsuit related to alleged financial misconduct. This time, he’s accused of pocketing at least $14 million from the struggling hospitals in Florida and elsewhere to pay for his “lavish lifestyle.”
That includes wiring over $109,000 from Healthcare Systems of America’s corporate account in 2025 to a Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills, California, for his son’s baptism and recently forging or “caus[ing] someone to forge” the signature of an employee to divert another $120,000, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court earlier this month.
The filing includes a social media post of Sarian celebrating his son’s baptism at the hotel and also a redacted bank document that lists a baptism as the reason for the money transfer out of the health system’s corporate account, which served as the operational money pool for hospitals in Florida and other states.
Sarian has denied wrongdoing. He and his wife, Evelina, in a text message to the Miami Herald said that the baptism payment referenced in the lawsuit was authorized by in-house counsel “as partial loan repayment to Mike,” who had earlier transferred $659,100 from his personal account to cover payroll.
The division of Healthcare Systems of America that is suing Sarian — known as HSA Florida — operates Palmetto General Hospital in Hialeah, Coral Gables Hospital, Hialeah Hospital, North Shore Medical Center in North Miami-Dade and Florida Medical Center in Lauderdale Lakes. HSA Florida took over the operations from troubled Steward Health Care System in 2024 as part of a bankruptcy deal to thin debt.
Evelina Sarian, Sarian’s wife, denied the allegations in a phone interview with the Herald on Wednesday. She described the lawsuit as a “retaliation move” by Faisal Gill, their former attorney and now the newly appointed CEO and chair of the Florida hospitals.
In April, Gill filed his own lawsuit against Sarian in Nevada. Gill has also replaced Sarian as CEO of NOR Healthcare Systems, which is registered in Nevada and operates hospitals in California. The Herald was unable to immediately obtain a copy of the lawsuit.
Gill previously served as the in-house counsel for Sarian’s growing hospital empire and also as a family attorney for the Sarians. Now, the couple is suing him in California for “breaches of fiduciary duty and legal malpractice that have impacted patient care, hospital operations, doctors and nurses,” Mike Sarian said in a text message.
“He is stealing my company that I own 100%,” Sarian texted the Herald, referring to HSA Florida. “He is terrorizing my family and my employees and even top executives were in constant fear for their positions in the company.”
Sarian, who has over 30 years of experience in the healthcare industry, says he is the founder and sole owner and shareholder of Healthcare Systems of America, which runs the five South Florida hospitals, along with hospitals in Texas and Louisiana. He was ousted earlier this year in what he previously described to the Herald as a “coup.” He previously told the Herald that all financial misconduct allegations against him are unfounded and that he’s in fear for his life and for his family’s safety.
Gill is also denying any wrongdoing.
“The allegations made by Mike and Evelina Sarian are false, defamatory, and without merit. This lawsuit seeks to have Mr. Sarian return the funds he took, ensuring those resources are properly directed toward hospital operations and patient care,” Gill said in a statement to the Herald through his attorney. “We have full confidence that the judicial system will resolve this matter based on the evidence presented in court. Our hospitals remain safe, fully operational, and unwavering in our commitment to providing high-quality healthcare every day.”
The complicated web of accusations is laid out in a series of lawsuits filed in Florida, Nevada and California.
The allegations
The latest Miami-Dade suit against Sarian alleges that over $14 million in questionable transfers were recorded between September 2024, when HSA took over the Steward hospitals, through January 2026, shortly before Sarian was ousted and replaced as CEO of the Florida hospitals.
“While the hospitals suffered, Sarian funneled money into his family trust account and threw lavish parties for his family at the hospitals’ expense,” the lawsuit alleges.
Sarian’s alleged transfers “directly contributed” to the current shaky financial condition of the hospitals, including “impairing plaintiffs’ ability to meet payroll, vendor, physician, service-provider, patient care, regulatory, and other operating obligations,” the suit states.
Evelina Sarian rebuked the lawsuit’s claims and told the Herald that Gill, whom she described as the family’s attorney and longtime friend and trusted adviser, had “set up traps” for her husband because he “was planning all along to take over the company.” That allegedly included altering corporate documents of NOR Healthcare, the California hospitals’ operator, to include a clause that would transfer 10% of the company to Gill upon Sarian’s death, according to court documents.
Gill denies those allegations.
Blame is also being thrown around for the financial distress the hospitals are in, including the ones in South Florida, which had languished under Steward Health while then-Steward CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre lived a luxurious lifestyle.
Hospital employees had hoped HSA’s 2024 takeover would be a new beginning. Instead, the recent lawsuit describes the hospitals remaining in a financial freefall, cutting services and struggling to buy supplies, pay providers, and keep up with taxes and other bills.
The Miami-Dade suit alleges that Sarian’s “scheme” to divert HSA operational funds caused “nearly significant damage” across the health network, including “jeopardiz[ing] patient safety.”
Sarian previously told the Herald that he made money transfers across the health systems as internal “loans” to help each system cover payroll expenses as needed and that Gill, as the health network’s attorney, was “supposed to do the paperwork” for it. He also said that he never took a salary from HSA and often used his own money to keep hospital operations afloat, including putting expenses on his personal American Express credit card.
The suit, which lists several examples of what it implies are unexplained money transfers, frames things differently. It alleges that Sarian’s “scheme” began almost immediately, going as far back as to 2024, when the hospitals’ landlord gave the health system over $16 million to “support the acquisition, transition and operation of certain facilities” in the HSA network.
“Within one day after HSA received the funding, Sarian caused $1,280,000.00 to be transferred from the HSA corporate account structure to his personal accounts,” the lawsuit alleges, claiming that Sarian has refused to give back the money and “has not provided a complete accounting” for all of the flagged transfers and what the money was used for.
The Sarians deny any misconduct and blame Gill for the hospitals’ financial bleeding, claiming that he created sham corporations to siphon money out of the health systems.
“All of it, they are alleging without any proof,” Evelina Sarian told the Herald.
In the separate California lawsuit she and her husband filed against Gill, they allege that he violated attorney-client privilege and used his position as their trusted attorney since 2021 to not just mislead them, but also to obtain privileged and confidential information that he later used for his own benefit.
The new lawsuits — the one filed in Miami-Dade by the hospital system against Sarian, and the one in California filed by the Sarians against Gill — come on the heels of a similar, but separate, court battle between Sarian and HSA Florida that’s related to bank accounts associated with the South Florida hospitals and who the legitimate CEO is.
HSA Florida, under the leadership of Gill, sued Sarian in March, accusing him of attempting to lock it out of bank accounts that were critical for payroll, patient care services and other hospital operations in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Sarian, who has denied those allegations, had sued Gill and a company stakeholder a week earlier, accusing them of stealing his company.
That power struggle is still playing out in court after a settlement deal fell through, according to Evelina Sarian.
