Nursing school operator pleads guilty to selling fake diplomas in South Florida

After two weeks of damning government evidence at trial, a former South Florida nursing school operator pleaded guilty on Monday to running a diploma mill for thousands of nurses rather than present a defense and let a jury decide her fate in Fort Lauderdale federal court.

Carleen Noreus pleaded guilty to two conspiracy counts of wire fraud and money laundering, including collaborating with an associate in selling about 2,600 fake nursing degrees for $10,000 to $20,000 each between 2018 and 2023 at two now-shuttered schools in Broward and Palm Beach counties. Noreus’ scheme, both with the associate and on her own, generated about $25 million in ill-gotten revenue, according to evidence at trial.

Noreus, 52, of Plantation, faces at least 14 years in prison at her sentencing on Sept. 10 before U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal. He allowed her to remain free on bond despite the prosecutors’ recommendation that she be held at a federal detention center

Like dozens of South Florida nursing school operators, Noreus was swept up into the feds’ diploma-mill dragnet — accused of selling thousands of fake degrees to students who authorities say took “shortcuts” in their education to become licensed nurses, according to a long-running investigation led by agents with the FBI and Health and Human Service

But unlike most who pleaded guilty and cut plea deals in the crackdown on more than 20 private nursing schools, Noreus took her chances on a federal jury trial that started two weeks ago in Fort Lauderdale federal court — until she changed her mind on Monday. Her decision will benefit her sentencing because she accepted responsibility. The other eight charges in her 10-count indictment will also be dismissed.

When the trial started in early June, Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Clark reminded the dozen jurors of Florence Nightingale, who was the founder of modern nursing in the 19th century and personified the ideal that “patient care is first and foremost.”

“We as patients put our trust in nurses — that they are equipped to perform the job. That’s the ideal situation,” Clark told the jury. “However, in this case that whole paradigm was turned on its head — it was turned on its head by this defendant, Carleen Noreus, a nurse herself.”

Clark argued that Noreus was motivated by “money and greed” as she collaborated with others to recruit and enroll about 2,750 students at her two schools in Plantation and West Palm Beach and charged them $10,000 to $20,000 for bogus diplomas and transcripts between 2018 and 2023.

Instead of delivering an education and training to the aspiring licensed practical nurses and registered nurses, Noreus and her associates “coached” them to take state licensing board exams. Many of the students in Noreus’ schools passed in Florida, which has reciprocity with many other states.

Defense attorney Andrew Feldman, portrayed her as an honest nurse and businesswoman as he shifted the blame to the nursing students and a business colleague who recruited many of them to one of her schools

“This case is about these nurses,” Feldman told the jurors. “Yet Carleen, not these nurses, is on trial. Yet Carleen, not these nurses, is accused of very serious crimes.”

A handful of nurses who obtained bogus degrees from Noreus’ two former schools in Plantation and West Palm Beach testified at her trial, although Clark, the prosecutor, was limited in how he could question one nurse linked to the death of a patient at a hospital in St. Louis.

Singhal restricted the questioning to the nurse’s lack of competence. In court papers filed last year, Clark alleged that Noreus sold a fake associate’s degree in nursing to a student who only took a few classes part-time instead of completing her two-year registered nursing program — and who then, after passing her state licensing exam, worked as a traveling registered nurse and “contributed” to the death of a patient at the St. Louis hospital in 2023.

The incident marked the first time that Clark had alleged a death in the prosecutions of about 50 defendants in the widespread South Florida nursing diploma-mill racket, which he estimated resulted in the sale of 15,000 bogus degrees to South Florida students who paid more than $220 million to take shortcuts in their education and training.

Clark argued that proper medical training was critical to patient safety, noting that the nurse lied about attending a Noreus school for two years and then used her fake degree and transcripts to obtain a job at the St. Louis hospital under “false pretenses.”

The nurse studied for a couple of months at Noreus’ school in Plantation before passing the state RN licensing exam in early 2021. The nurse was placed by a staffing company at the Missouri hospital after she and her daughter, who worked for Noreus’ school, lied that she had completed the associate’s degree program from August 2018 to December 2020, according to Clark.

The nurse was assigned to work at the Missouri hospital in May 2023. But a few months later, she was “terminated from her RN position due to … an unexpected incident that caused death or serious injury,” according to the court document filed by Clark.

On Aug. 2, 2023, the nurse “failed to provide proper medical care to one of her assigned patients throughout her shift who had experienced atrial fibrillation or an irregular and often very rapid heartbeat,” the filing says. “She failed to timely notify the attending physician or nurse in charge as was protocol.”

‘Operation Nightingale’

Noreus served as president of Carleen Home Health School in Plantation and vice president of Carleen Home Health School II in West Palm Beach. She hired New Jersey businessman Stanton Witherspoon as the latter school’s president in October 2020 — a hire that would come back to haunt her. Three years later, Witherspoon pleaded guilty to wire-fraud charges stemming from his part ownership of another nursing school, Siena College of Health II, which was in Lauderhill and sold hundreds of phony diplomas and transcripts to students seeking to become licensed practical or registered nurses.

Witherspoon was sentenced to more than three years in prison and ordered to pay $3.5 million that he received in criminal proceeds to the federal government. Witherspoon, along with a few others charged in the Siena College case, assisted federal authorities in their probe of Noreus.

Witherspoon testified against Noreus at trial. She was accused of conspiring with Witherspoon, who was not charged in her case, and the other cooperating defendants to solicit students seeking nursing credentials and healthcare employment. Witherspoon testified that he recruited about 1,000 students, charging them an average of $15,000 each while paying Noreus $5,000 per student.

Noreus and the others created and distributed fraudulent diplomas and transcripts that falsely represented that the students completed the necessary coursework and clinical training at her two nursing schools when they didn’t, according to her indictment.

Among the students solicited by Noreus was the nurse implicated in the patient’s death at the St. Louis hospital. Her indictment only referred to the nurse as “co-conspirator 1.” The indictment says co-conspirator 1 and others used the fake diplomas and documents to obtain nursing licenses in various states, including California, Pennsylvania and Florida.

Under the Nurse Licensure Compact, for example, students who obtain nursing licenses in Florida are allowed to practice in 41 other compact states, including Missouri. Many of the students were able to pass the Florida test because of the coaching and their experience in nursing.

Crackdown on more than 20 nursing schools in South Florida

In practice, the network of scofflaw nursing schools provided a shortcut for students to avoid taking a one-year LPN or two-year RN program requiring clinical work, national exams and certification, while instructors coached them on taking the licensing exams to practice nursing in a number of states, said Clark, who prosecuted the Noreus case with colleague Jon Juenger.

The vast majority of students who purchased their fake degrees were from South Florida, including many in Haitian-American communities who had legitimate LPN licenses and wanted to become registered nurses, former U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe said in 2023.

Other students were recruited from out of state. Many of the school operators and recruiters were of Haitian descent or from the Caribbean and tapped into their ethnic communities for students. The federal investigation, dubbed Operation Nightingale, began in 2019 with a tip that came from Maryland and led to an FBI undercover operation that initially targeted two Fort Lauderdale business people who collaborated with the operators of Siena College of Health II in Lauderhill and Palm Beach School of Nursing in Lake Worth to sell fraudulent diplomas and college transcripts, according to court records.

The crackdown on more than 20 nursing schools in South Florida rattled the healthcare industry both here and across the country as federal agents alerted state licensing boards about the nurses who illicitly obtained their credentials.