Florida operator accused of selling fake degree to nurse implicated in patient death

Over the past three years, more than 40 people have been charged with selling about 15,000 fake nursing school diplomas to South Florida students who paid more than $220 million to take shortcuts in their education, federal authorities say.

Most have been convicted of fraud.

But amid the staggering numbers, a recent case stands out from the rest for its deadly outcome.

For the first time, a prosecutor has alleged a South Florida school operator sold a phony associate’s degree in nursing to a student who only took a few classes part-time instead of completing her two-year program — and who then, after passing her licensing exam, worked as a traveling registered nurse and “contributed” to the death of a patient at a Missouri hospital in 2023.

Carleen Noreus, 51, the former owner of two shuttered nursing schools in South Florida, is charged with selling the nurse and others fake diplomas and transcripts in a conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering case that is set for trial in December in Fort Lauderdale federal court. She is not charged in any way with the patient’s death.

But a federal prosecutor wants to present evidence in her case that she sold the bogus school documents to the nurse implicated in the patient’s death, including calling a supervisor at the St. Louis hospital to testify as a witness. In court papers, Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Clark argues that proper medical training is critical to patient safety, noting that the nurse lied about attending Noreus’ school for two years and then used her fake degree and transcripts to obtain a job at the hospital under “false pretenses.”

Noreus’ defense attorney strongly disagreed, saying his client is innocent and that the evidence of the patient’s death should be excluded from her criminal case.

“Despite the government’s jacked-up allegations against Mrs. Noreus, she has pleaded not guilty and intends to mount a vigorous defense,” lawyer Andrew Feldman said on Friday.

Studied in Plantation

The unnamed 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 prosecutor.

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 a court document filed on Friday by Clark.

On Aug. 2, 2023, the unnamed 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.”

“When ordered to administer an IV, [the nurse] did not check to see if her IV access was proper and attempted to infuse liquids into a ‘blown’ IV,” the filing continues. “Two hours later, another emergency alert went off in the patient’s room and [the nurse] failed to respond to calls by staff.”

“When staff arrived in the room, they observed [the nurse] attempting to feed the patient who had difficulty breathing and was vomiting,” the filing notes. “Staff intervened and assessed that the patient had a distended abdomen and was fluid overloaded. The patient’s health continued to deteriorate while [the nurse] failed to respond to calls. Within two hours the patient died and [the nurse] failed to include notes pertaining to the patient’s death in the chart.”

In the filing, Clark said the nurse failed to provide proper medical care to other patients at the Missouri hospital, adding that another hospital in Phoenix had also terminated her due to patient safety concerns.

Noreus’ defense attorney is trying to stop the prosecutor from introducing the evidence, saying it would needlessly tarnish her in the eyes of jurors in a case that’s fundamentally about allegations of fraudulently operating a pair of South Florida nursing schools between 2019 and 2022.

“The government will contest that the evidence is relevant because it shows the lack of training [the nurse] obtained from Carleen’s school and it shows [her] lack of competence,” Feldman wrote in a motion filed in early September.

“This court should not be burdened with deciding issues that the states have delegated to licensing boards,” Feldman wrote. “And, the jurors should not be burdened with a mini-trial relating to standard of care issues which are not relevant to the charged conspiracy.”

Feldman argued that the prosecutor’s evidence about the nurse should be excluded by U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal because it’s prejudicial, citing other healthcare fraud cases where judges have kept out such evidence.

“The only possible government motiviation for introducing such inflammatory, irrelevant evidence is to demonize Mrs. Noreus and to place a representative from [the Missouri hospital] on the stand to testify about the events leading to the patient’s death,” Feldman wrote in his filing.

‘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 in Lauderhill, that 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, 50, along with a few others charged in the Siena College case, assisted federal authorities in their probe of Noreus.

Noreus is accused of conspiring with Witherspoon, who is not charged in her case, and the other cooperating defendants to solicit students seeking nursing credentials and healthcare employment, according to her indictment. 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, the indictment says.

Among those students solicited by Noreus is the nurse implicated in the patient’s death at the Missouri hospital, according to Clark, the prosecutor. Her indictment only refers 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.

Crackdown of 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, prosecutors said.

All of the students purchased their fake degrees for $10,000 to $20,000 each. The vast majority were from South Florida, including many from the Haitian American community 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.

The federal investigation, aptly dubbed Operation Nightingale, began in 2019 with a tip from Maryland that led to an FBI undercover operation that initially targeted two Fort Lauderdale business people who collaborated with the operators of Siena College of Health 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 agents with the FBI and Health and Human Services alerted state licensing boards about the nurses who illicitly obtained their credentials.

Last year, a federal judge in Fort Lauderdale sentenced a 72-year-old grandmother from Coconut Creek to more than six years in prison after she was convicted of running a “diploma mill” out of a defunct nursing school that sold thousands of fake degrees for millions of dollars.

Gail Russ, the former registrar at the Palm Beach School of Nursing, was found guilty of conspiracy along with a dozen wire fraud charges at trial in December 2023, when jurors found that she carried out the dirty work of the school’s owner by selling about 3,400 bogus diplomas.

In addition, Judge Singhal sentenced Cassandre Jean, 38, a student recruiter from New York, to three years in prison, and Vilaire Duroseau, 58, a student recruiter from New Jersey, to two years and nine months. At trial in December 2023, the jury found Jean — who owned homes in Wellington, Florida, and Long Island, New York, that were seized by authorities — guilty of conspiracy and four wire fraud counts. Duroseau was found guilty of conspiracy and three wire fraud counts.

Also among those initially targeted: the Palm Beach School of Nursing’s president, Johanah Napoleon of West Palm Beach, who pleaded guilty to a wire-fraud conspiracy charge. Napoleon, who cooperated with prosecutors and testified at the Fort Lauderdale trial, received a brief prison sentence and was ordered to pay about $3.5 million from her criminal proceeds to the federal government.

More recently, her brother, Jose Napoleon, the director of admissions at Azure College in Fort Lauderdale, was charged this year with a wire-fraud conspiracy involving the sale of false nursing degrees. Court records show he’s expected to plead guilty.

This story was originally published September 20, 2025 at 9:55 AM.