Nurse Who Sold 2,600 Fake Diplomas Pleads Guilty Mid-Trial, Faces Prison Term

Image source: Orlando Sentinel

A former South Florida nursing school operator pleaded guilty on Monday to running a diploma mill for thousands of nurses, abandoning her federal jury trial in Fort Lauderdale after two weeks of government evidence rather than letting a jury decide her fate.

Carleen Noreus, 52, of Plantation, admitted to two conspiracy counts of wire fraud and money laundering, including collaborating with an associate to recruit about 2,750 students at her two schools and charge them $10,000–$20,000 for bogus diplomas and transcripts—including about 2,600 fake nursing degrees. The conduct occurred between 2018 and 2023 at two schools in Broward and Palm Beach counties. Prosecutors said the scheme generated roughly $25 million in revenue.

Noreus faces a long prison term at her sentencing on Sept. 10 before U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal, who allowed her to remain free on bond despite prosecutors’ request that she be held at a federal detention center. The allegations against her had not been proven at trial; she ultimately accepted responsibility through her plea, and the remaining eight charges in her 10-count indictment will be dismissed.

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Unlike most of the more than 50 defendants who cut plea deals in the crackdown, Noreus took her chances at a jury trial that started in early June. She changed course on Monday, a decision the Miami Herald reported will benefit her sentencing because she accepted responsibility.

When the trial opened, Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Clark reminded the jury of Florence Nightingale, the 19th-century founder of modern nursing, and the ideal that “patient care is first and foremost.” As Clark told jurors, “We as patients put our trust in nurses, that they are equipped to perform the job. That’s the ideal situation. 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 and others recruited roughly 2,750 students at her schools in Plantation and West Palm Beach and charged them for bogus diplomas and transcripts. Instead of delivering an education, prosecutors said, Noreus and her associates “coached” students to pass state licensing board exams. Many passed in Florida, which has licensing reciprocity with many other states. Her defense attorney, Andrew Feldman, portrayed Noreus as an honest nurse and businesswoman and shifted blame to the students and a colleague who recruited many of them.

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A handful of nurses who obtained degrees from Noreus’ schools testified at trial. Prosecutors alleged that Noreus sold a fake associate’s degree to a student who took only a few part-time classes instead of completing a two-year registered nursing program. After passing her state licensing exam, that nurse worked as a traveling RN and, prosecutors said, “contributed” to the death of a patient at a St. Louis hospital in 2023.

According to court documents, 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” and “failed to timely notify the attending physician or nurse in charge as was protocol.” Clark said it was the first time prosecutors alleged a death in the prosecutions of about 50 defendants in the racket, which he estimated produced 15,000 bogus degrees sold to South Florida students who paid more than $220 million to take shortcuts in their training. 

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. Witherspoon later pleaded guilty to wire fraud, was sentenced to more than three years in prison and ordered to pay $3.5 million, and testified against Noreus at trial.

The case is the latest chapter in Operation Nightingale, the federal investigation led by the FBI and the Department of Health and Human Services that began in 2019 with a tip from Maryland and led to an FBI undercover operation. The crackdown on more than 20 private nursing schools rattled the healthcare industry nationwide as federal agents alerted state licensing boards about nurses who illicitly obtained their credentials. (Nurse.org covered the expanding charges as they unfolded.)

For working nurses, the fallout is real and ongoing. Former U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe said in 2023 that the vast majority of buyers were from South Florida, including many in Haitian-American communities who held legitimate LPN licenses and wanted to become RNs. Many of those nurses have had licenses flagged or revoked, and the case reinforces a hard truth: a credential is only as good as the training behind it, and patient safety is the reason licensing standards exist. The St. Louis allegation is a stark reminder that fraudulent shortcuts can land an unprepared clinician at a bedside, putting both patients and honest colleagues at risk. 

🤔 If you worked alongside a colleague whose credentials turned out to be fraudulent, how should hospitals handle the patients, and the trust, that were put at risk? Tell us in the comments below.

Crime