Feds Say South Florida Diploma Mills Sold Thousands of Fake Nursing Credentials; Full Measure Airs Undercover Case

Federal prosecutors in South Florida have convicted every defendant charged so far in Operation Nightingale, a years-long case against for-profit nursing schools that sold diplomas and transcripts to people who did not complete required classes or clinical training. Buyers then sat for the NCLEX licensing exam and, in large numbers, went to work in hospitals, nursing homes, and clinics across the country. Sharyl Attkisson’s Full Measure, scheduled to air Sunday and reported Friday by Just the News, published new on-camera detail from the Health and Human Services inspector general’s Miami office, including an undercover purchase and an agent’s estimate that the network moved about $250 million in fake diplomas to roughly 15,000 buyers. Court records put the scheme in the same range and document individual schools that issued thousands of fraudulent credentials.

Isaac Bledsoe, special agent in charge of the HHS-OIG Miami office, told Full Measure the case started with a tip: a relative was asked to lend about $16,000 because “there’s a school in South Florida that will give them a nursing diploma.” Investigators sent an undercover buyer who had no healthcare background. On video obtained for the broadcast, recruiter Geralda Adrien told the agent that if the buyer was “ready to go now,” she could route the exam through New York’s board — “the easiest state for processing” — while the test itself could be taken in Florida. Bledsoe told Attkisson the group sold $250 million in fake diplomas nationwide. Buying a bogus degree is not itself a federal crime; prosecutors charged the sellers and school operators, not the purchasers. Forty-three people have been charged and convicted, Bledsoe said, with sentences generally in the four-to-six-year range. Prosecutors have described luxury homes, cars, and travel funded by the proceeds.

Those figures sit on top of charging documents from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. Phase I of Operation Nightingale, announced in 2023, produced 30 convictions. Phase II added more defendants. Carleen Noreus, 52, of Plantation, president of Carleen Home Health School and vice president of a West Palm Beach sister campus, pleaded guilty in June after two weeks of trial to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Evidence at trial established she was responsible for 2,956 fraudulent RN, LPN, and BSN diplomas between April 2018 and October 2025. About 2,274 of those buyers passed board exams and obtained licenses. Students paid $10,000 to $20,000. U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal sentenced Noreus on Sept. 15 to 87 months in prison, the longest term reported in the Florida cases. A forfeiture hearing is set for Oct. 20; prosecutors have said she took in roughly $10 million. Other convicted operators include Johanah Napoleon of Palm Beach School of Nursing and Eunide Sanon of Siena College of Health. State boards have shut down the schools. Former U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe said in 2023 that a large share of buyers came from South Florida’s Haitian-American community, including LPNs seeking RN credentials; recruiters of Haitian and Caribbean descent worked those networks and also pulled students from out of state. Prosecutor Christopher Clark has estimated about 15,000 bogus degrees sold for more than $220 million. In the Noreus case, prosecutors alleged for the first time that a fraudulently credentialed nurse was tied to a patient death at a St. Louis hospital in 2023. Attkisson’s report said many of the 15,000 have already disappeared into the health-care workforce. State boards in Florida, New Jersey, Texas, and elsewhere have been pulling licenses tied to the closed schools; some nurses with Nightingale-school diplomas have remained licensed while boards demand proof of legitimate training.