Rather primitive scheme in my opinion. Does raise some concerns. LINK: https://www.medscape.com/viewa...Y&impID=5133295#vp_2

UPDATED February 2, 2023 // Editor's note: Georgia nurses are pushing back against a request by the Georgia Board of Nursing to voluntarily surrender their nursing licenses.

At least one state licensing agency is revoking nursing licenses allegedly obtained in a multistate fake diploma scheme.

The US Department of Justice recently announced charges against 25 owners, operators, and employees of three Florida nursing schools in a fraud scheme in which they sold as many as 7600 fake nursing degrees.

The purchasers in the diploma scheme paid $10,000 to $15,000 for degrees and transcripts showing they'd received associates degrees, and some 2800 of the buyers passed the national nursing licensing exam to become registered nurses (RNs) and licensed practice nurses/vocational nurses (LPN/VNs) around the country, according to The New York Times.

Many of the degree recipients went on to work at hospitals, nursing homes, and Veterans Affairs medical centers, according to the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida.

Several national nursing organizations cooperated with the investigation, and the Delaware Division of Professional Regulation already annulled 26 licenses, according to the Delaware Nurses Association. Other states are considering taking similar steps as they identify nurses with fake licenses, various news media reported. Those charged in the case were operating in five states, according to federal reports.

"We are deeply unsettled by this egregious act," DNA President Stephanie McClellan, MSN, RN, CMSRN, said in the group's press statement. "We want all Delaware nurses to be aware of this active issue and to speak up if there is a concern regarding capacity to practice safely by a colleague/peer," she said.

The Oregon State Board of Nursing is also investigating at least a dozen nurses who may have paid for their degrees, according to a Portland CBS affiliate.

The National Council of State Boards of Nursing said in a statement that it had helped authorities identify and monitor the individuals who allegedly provided the false degrees.

Nursing Community Reacts
News of the fraud scheme spread through the nursing community, including social media. "The recent report on falsified nursing school degrees is both heartbreaking and serves as an eye-opener," Usha Menon, PhD, RN, FAAN, dean and health professor of the University of South Florida Health College of Nursing, tweeted. "There was enough of a need that prompted these bad actors to develop a scheme that could've endangered dozens of lives."

Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, PhD, MBA, RN, the new president of the American Nurses Association, also weighed in. "The accusation that personnel at once-accredited nursing schools allegedly participated in this scheme is simply deplorable. These unlawful and unethical acts disparage the reputation of actual nurses everywhere who have rightfully earned [their titles] through their education, hard work, dedication and time."

The false degrees and transcripts were issued by three once-accredited and now-shuttered nursing schools in South Florida: Palm Beach School of Nursing, Sacred Heart International Institute, and Sienna College.



Cite this: Feds Charge 25 Nursing School Execs, Staff in Fake Diploma Scheme - Medscape - Jan 30, 2023.

Recommendations
Officials: Nurse Practitioner Pocketed a Million in Loan Scheme
Officials: Nurse Practitioner Pocketed a Million in Loan Scheme

30 Years of Fake Nursing Ends With 7-Year Prison
The alleged co-conspirators reportedly made $114 million from the scheme, which dates back to 2016, according to several news reports. Each defendant faces up to 20 years in prison.

Most LPN programs charge $10,000 to $15,000 to complete a program, Robert Rosseter, a spokesperson for the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), told Medscape Medical News.

None were AACN members, and none were accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, which is AACN's autonomous accrediting agency, Rosseter said. AACN membership is voluntary and is open to schools offering baccalaureate or higher degrees, he explained.

"What is disturbing about this investigation is that there are over 7600 people around the country with fraudulent nursing credentials who are potentially in critical health care roles treating patients," Chad Yarbrough, acting special agent in charge for the FBI in Miami, said in the federal justice department release.

"Operation Nightingale" Based on Tip
The federal action, dubbed "Operation Nightingale" after the nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale, began in 2019. It was based on a tip related to a case in Maryland, according to Nurse.org.

That case ensnared Palm Beach School of Nursing owner Johanah Napoleon, who reportedly was selling fake degrees for $6000 to $18000 each to two individuals in Maryland and Virginia. Napoleon was charged in 2021 and eventually pled guilty. The Florida Board of Nursing shut down the Palm Beach school in 2017 owing to its students' low passing rate on the national licensing exam.

Two participants in the bigger scheme who had also worked with Napoleon, Geralda Adrien and Woosvelt Predestin, were indicted in 2021. Adrien owned private education companies for people who at aspired to be nurses, and Predestin was an employee. They were sentenced to 27 months in prison last year and helped the federal officials build the larger case.

The 25 individuals who were charged January 25 operated in Delaware, New York, New Jersey, Texas, and Florida.

Schemes Lured Immigrants
In the scheme involving Siena College, some of the individuals acted as recruiters to direct nurses who were looking for employment to the school, where they allegedly would then pay for an RN or LPN/VN degree. The recipients of the false documents then used them to obtain jobs, including at a hospital in Georgia and a Veterans Affairs medical center in Maryland, according to one indictment. The president of Siena and her co-conspirators sold more than 2000 fake diplomas, according to charging documents.

At the Palm Beach College of Nursing, individuals at various nursing prep and education programs allegedly helped others obtain fake degrees and transcripts, which were then used to pass RN and LPN/VN licensing exams in states that included Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Ohio, according to the indictment.

Some individuals then secured employment with a nursing home in Ohio, a home health agency for pediatric patients in Massachusetts, and skilled nursing facilities in New York and New Jersey.

Prosecutors allege that the president of Sacred Heart International Institute and two other co-conspirators sold 588 fake diplomas.

The FBI said that some of the aspiring nurses who were talked into buying the degrees were LPNs who wanted to become RNs and that most of those lured into the scheme were from South Florida's Haitian American immigrant community, Nurse.org reported.

Alicia Ault is a Saint Petersburg, Florida-based freelance journalist whose work has appeared in publications including JAMA and Smithsonian.com. You can find her on Twitter @aliciaault.

Great! Another episode that undermines trust in the medical profession.

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Some responsibilty lies with the hospitals and their credentialing department. The state licensing boards are culpable as well. I would rather see these things exposed than pushed under the rug.

I wonder if there are schools that give you fake MD degree for a fee, and if so, have they been busted.

Aside from stripping the licenses of those who took the NCLEX exams (and luckily passed), they should also charge them with whatever criminal charge they can. Those people know they did not have the proper education and training, and yet, still practiced nursing. People can (and could have been) hurt, or worse killed. This is very dangerous.

I can see how some of those nurses made it through the VA hiring process. The requirement is that a candidate got his/her diploma in an accredited nursing school. In this case (to my understanding), the schools involved were accredited schools, but were involved in selling diplomas, making it look like they actually went to school and graduated. My assumption is that they presented those school credentials when they applied to take the NCLEX exams. How they passed the NCLEX exams is a different matter on its own. It maybe they study their asses off and read the NCLEX review book front to back. Or there maybe another issue with the State where they took the NCLEX from. Either way, they SHOULDNT be practicing nursing.

This is very BAD for the patients and their safety.

I totally agree with this. They should conduct further investigation, to include the State Board of Nursing where they got the licenses from. There maybe some other anomaly with the licensing department, or the applicants were just too smart and read the review book front to back and actually passed the exam (but didn't actually went to nursing school).

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
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Some responsibilty lies with the hospitals and their credentialing department. The state licensing boards are culpable as well. I would rather see these things exposed than pushed under the rug.

Usually the license is permanently yanked if the degree was phony. If some college classes were proven to not actually completed and passing, any degree from that point on is withdrawn.

quote:

Originally posted by c1steve:
Usually the license is permanently yanked if the degree was phony. If some college classes were proven to not actually completed and passing, any degree from that point on is withdrawn.

I work in the college of Nursing at a University.They can’t even retake failed classes in the upper level program. Fail a class, you are out of the program. Don’t take transfers from another program without a letter of good standing from current Dean, plus they essentially start over because we don’t accept transfer credits from another program. Flunk out and you can’t reapply for five years.

And 3 of them were working at the VA here in Atlanta.

Curious to know if any of them were caucasian American citizens...or not.

quote:

Originally posted by ador:
How they passed the NCLEX exams is a different matter on its own. It maybe they study their asses off and read the NCLEX review book front to back. Or there maybe another issue with the State where they took the NCLEX from.

I certainly agree that since they knowingly obtained fraudulent degrees in an active attempt to bypass known rules, they therefore have no business retaining their credentials.

But hear me out, for the sake of playing devil's advocate...

Assuming (for the sake of argument) that the nursing exam is sufficiently comprehensive and difficult, befitting the high level of risk and safety involved in the nursing profession, why should someone who was [non-fraudulently] self-taught to a level that allows them to pass this exam not be allowed to obtain credentials?

Similar to the long-standing but now-dying tradition of "reading the law" in lieu of attending law school. If you learned enough to pass the bar exam, who's to say that you aren't as well-educated as someone who graduated from a formal law school?

And it's on a much smaller scale, of course, but there are those like me who managed to skip several mandatory courses for Bachelor's degrees by simply taking and passing CLEP exams showing sufficient grasp of the materials, without having to take the classes themselves.

OK I will play. I have known many booksmart RNS who had ZERO clinical skills and could not relate to others. The could not insert an IV, spent time flirting with the Docs and cackling loudly with their buddies. If you have ever spent significant time in a hospital you know what I mean.
The nursing exam is not a measure of clinical skills. The same goes for LEOs.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
OK I will play. I have known many booksmart RNS who had ZERO clinical skills and could not relate to others. The could not insert an IV, spent time flirting with the Docs and cackling loudly with their buddies. If you have ever spent significant time in a hospital you know what I mean.
The nursing exam is not a measure of clinical skills.

And these nurses managed to get legitimate nursing credentials despite having ZERO clinical/social skills, yes?

So what is the difference between a booksmart RN with zero clinical/social skills who graduated from nursing school and then passed the exam and is now allowed to be a nurse, versus a booksmart RN with zero clinical/social skills who was self-taught and then managed to pass the exam? Why can the former be a nurse but not the latter? Both are lacking clinical/social skills, so that can't be it.

If the issue is that nurses should have clinical/social skills, then nursing school doesn't seem to be the deciding factor here, since there are by your own admission a number of nurses who are graduating nursing schools and obtaining credentials yet apparently have none.

It sounds like the nursing exam should be measuring clinical/social skills, in that case. Merely requiring graduation from an accredited nursing school doesn't seem to be an effective filter for clinical/social skills, so again, why is that a strict requirement?

quote:

It sounds like the nursing exam should be measuring clinical skills, in that case.

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Yep. Instructors should get to know the students and weed out those that lack clincial AND social skills. A written test is not a good measure.
Perhaps some of the nurses can add something here. I have worked with many nurses over the years and could quickly tell who I would want taking care of me.