In spring of 2021, a man visits a small storefront in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He tells the woman at the desk – the business owner– that he wants a nursing degree.

What happens next, captured on undercover video, helps unravel one of the largest healthcare fraud schemes in recent U.S. history, operating heavily in South Florida’s tight-knit Haitian immigrant networks. 

The con secretly recruited and collected money from people who wanted to buy, not earn, nursing diplomas.

Isaac Bledsoe is a federal Special Agent in Charge of the Inspector General’s Miami office at Health and Human Services. He says his agency got onto the fraud through a tip.

“So believe it or not, we had an individual whose family member had reached out to them, asked if they could borrow somewhere around $16,000, that if they had the money, there’s a school in South Florida that will give them a nursing diploma,” Bledsoe recently told Full Measure, in explaining the scheme. 

“So we started off with an undercover immediately, where we had an undercover reach out to one of these schools in South Florida, put themselves out as an individual who has no healthcare background but looking to buy, wants to be a nurse, looking to buy a nursing diploma and ‘what can they do?’”

The video shows the undercover agent talking to fraudster Geralda Adrien about buying a nursing degree with no training or classes required.

“It depends on how ready you are,” Adrien tells the agent who is posing as a wannabe nurse. “Because if you’re ready to go now, I have a way of getting you tested in a school in New York. It is the easiest state for processing. You don’t have to go to New York, you can test here [Florida] but you just get processed through the board of New York.”

Adrien’s companies functioned as brokers for the entire racket, conspiring with the owners and operators of actual accredited Florida nursing schools that issued fraudulent diplomas and transcripts. The undercover agent was able to buy his fake diploma for $16,000.

Bledsoe says the group of fraudsters sold $250 million in fake diplomas across the country to 15,000 “nurses.” Many of them have disappeared into America’s health care system.

Meanwhile, prosecutors say the thieves lived lavishly off their proceeds, using the cash for luxury homes, cars and travel.

Forty-three people have been charged and, so far, all have been convicted. They are serving anywhere from four to six years in prison.

Among those convicted: Adrien; Johanah Napoleon, owner of the Palm Beach School of Nursing; Eunide Sanon, owner of Siena College of Health; and Carleen Noreus, owner of Carleen Health Institute. 

Noreus pleaded guilty mid-trial in June to selling nearly 3,000 diplomas. She was ordered to forfeit nearly $4 million. The others are ordered to give up millions more.

Meantime, the real world fall-out continues. Unqualified nurses treating vulnerable patients – in hospitals, nursing homes, and clinics – a direct threat to patient safety.

Bledsoe says the feds didn’t go after the phony nurses because buying bogus degrees isn’t a federal crime. 

Today, the names of two dozen Florida nursing schools, now shut down, are posted on nursing board websites as states take steps to root out the impersonators and revoke licenses.

Just the News, Sharyl Attkisson