Mother Jones illustration; Unsplash; Wikimedia
Last week, authorities in Louisiana issued an arrest warrant for a businessman who they believe has run a vitriolic social media account that for years has harassed and threatened critics of America’s largest hospital landlord—Medical Properties Trust (MPT). Last year, Mother Jones and Reveal investigated MPT and found that its business model was sinking hospitals around the country and hurting patient care.
Our reporting also unravelled an extensive campaign to silence MPT’s critics. The effort included surveillance by private intelligence firms and a coordinated social media push by anonymous accounts who sent thousands of messages trying to intimidate journalists and analysts raising the possibility that MPT may be committing fraud, in part through complex loans it was secretly sending to prop up its biggest tenant and joint partner, Steward Healthcare, as it flailed financially. (The now-bankrupt Steward paid for the private intelligence firms.) It is unclear which anonymous trolls were paid for by the intelligence firm, but chief among them was an X user who goes by “Abe.”
Louisiana authorities believe they have identified the man behind Abe as Delaware’s Bruce Tigani Jr. He is the son of a prominent attorney and worked at commercial real estate company Newmark until sometime in 2025. Delaware State Police confirmed to Mother Jones that Tigani was arrested in Wilmington on April 2 and charged as an out of state fugitive. He was then arraigned in local court and released on $5,000 bond. (Tigani did not respond to phone calls and an emailed list of questions.)
The warrant charges Tigani with a felony for making death threats on X as Abe against a Louisiana lawmaker, state Rep. Michael Echols. For the last three years, Echols has blamed MPT for the devastation at the hospital in his district, and tried to hold the company accountable by convening public hearings and, eventually, penning legislation that targeted MPT, its board, and executives.
“Delete your account..then your life…assistance will be provided if you don’t take your own measures,” The Abe account wrote to Echols on X. “You’re going to lose everything you ever even thought about loving…wife? Bye…kids? Bye….Sweetheart it’s gonna be a long long summer you hog.. say goodbye to your children.”
For years, Abe sent similar screeds to financial analysts who questioned the image of success that MPT, which is publicly traded, has projected to shareholders. He appeared online not long after a pair of analysts — Rob Simone at Hedgeye, a financial research firm, and an X account that goes by Big River—began to publish reports asking whether MPT was hiding the damage its business was doing to hospitals with clever accounting that both overvalued its hospital real estate and papered over just how many were failing to pay rent under MPT’s oppressive leases.
Abe came after Simone with full force. He tweeted out Simone’s address and country club, threatened his family, and asked if he had security, saying that “his life is in danger.” In 2023, a prominent shortselling firm called Viceroy Research published its own report on MPT, expanding on the existing claims that the landlord was engaged in financial fraud. Abe immediately went after Viceroy too.
After we published our reporting on MPT in July 2025, Abe sent us sexist and harassing tweets and emails. We responded to his first email with a request for an interview. He answered: “Why don’t you use your superior investigative skills and look into your sources yourself,” he wrote. “Do you want to know where to look or do you want to keep being a cunt?”
Abe’s attacks on Echols ramped up in the summer of 2025, when the lawmaker introduced a bill in the Louisiana House to hold MPT financially liable for the downfall of the hospital in Echols’ district, Glenwood Regional Medical Center, which has been owned by MPT since 2013.
The bill proposed fining MPT, as well as its executives and board members, hundreds of thousands of dollars if Glenwood became insolvent. It was an attempt by Echols to prevent further gutting of the hospital by its owners.
For years, Steward Healthcare had run Glenwood, while paying rent to MPT for the property. When Steward declared bankruptcy in 2024, the company revealed that it owed MPT about $6 billion in rent across more than 30 hospitals, including Glenwood. The effects of this financial deficit on patients had grown alarming at MPT-owned hospitals: Glenwood staff testified in multiple hearings that they regularly were without the basic materials they needed to do their jobs, suppliers went unpaid, and doctors and nurses left. Declaring bankruptcy solved none of these problems.
Echols’ bill to prevent more damage like this at MPT hospitals was voted down in committee, but the legislator became the public face taking on a powerful real estate company. The attacks online from the account allegedly run by Tigani “willfully and unlawfully use[d] violence” with “the intent to retaliate against” Echols, according to the warrant. It was just a few weeks after a legislative hearing on Echols’ bill that “Abe” sent the lawmaker the death threats that are now the basis of his felony charge in Louisiana, including, “Lol your life is over… get ready… piece by piece then all at’once remember? Little pieces for the fishies.”
“It’s disturbing that as elected officials, we have to deal with lunatics that bring our families into what are political decisions,” Echols says.
What remains unclear is why Tigani would devote so much energy to attack the critics of a real estate company. The warrant implies that it could be because Tigani wanted MPT’s stock to remain high. “Tigani Jr. heavily promotes MPT stock on social media,” the warrant notes. “Michael Echols has been publicly critical of MPT, giving Bruce Tigani motive to make threats.”
“If he’s out threatening to kill elected officials and their families and the other people who he has harassed online, you would assume he has a financial stake in something,” Echols told Mother Jones.
In a written statement, MPT denied having any relationship with Tigani Jr. “It is false and irresponsible for any media outlet to suggest otherwise. We condemn in the strongest possible terms threats of violence of any kind,” MPT told Mother Jones.
What we do know is that Tigani worked for Newmark, a commercial real estate advisory firm that helps businesses finance real estate expansions, until some point in 2025, according to a Newmark representative. Leaked documents shared with Mother Jones by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project show that a company affiliated with Newmark, Knight Frank, did valuations for MPT properties in 2020. A Newmark representative did not contest the work for MPT and noted that while Knight Frank and Newmark were affiliated then, they have not been for years.
Tigani’s father, who is also mentioned in the warrant, is a partner at Morris James LLP in Delaware. His firm has represented MPT, its hospitals, and its tenants numerous times in bankruptcies as recent as 2023.
Morris James declined to comment, and MPT denied having any relationship with the elder Tigani.
The warrant for Tigani’s arrest and extradition to Louisiana now heads to the governor’s desk for signature. If Tigani does not agree to appear in court in Louisiana, there’s a “fugitive hearing” scheduled in Delaware in May to extradite him.
