West Palm-area nursing school one of three targeted in fake diploma fraud probe

MIAMI — A now-shuttered nursing school in suburban West Palm Beach is one of three involved in a scam to create an illegal licensing and employment shortcut for aspiring nurses, federal officials in Miami said Wednesday.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami has indicted more than two dozen people in the scheme, which sold fraudulent nursing-school diplomas and academic transcripts from accredited Florida-based nursing schools to those seeking licenses to work as nurses. Each defendant faces up to 20 years in prison.

The three South Florida nursing schools targeted in the investigation issued more than 7,600 fake nursing diplomas, prosecutors alleged. One of them was the Palm Beach School of Nursing on Military Trail north of Okeechobee Boulevard. The others were Siena College and Sacred Heart International Institute, both in Broward County.

"Health care fraud is nothing new to South Florida, as many scammers see this as a way to earn easy, though illegal, money," Chad Yarbrough, special agent in charge of the FBI's Miami office, said in a prepared statement. "What is disturbing about this investigation is that there are over 7,600 people around the country with fraudulent nursing credentials who are potentially in critical health care roles treating patients."

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Few Palm Beach School of Nursing students completed classes, prosecutors say

Court records show that the Palm Beach School of Nursing was licensed by the Florida Board of Nursing as a nursing education program in June of 2012 and incorporated in April 2016. Its license was terminated in May 2017 due to the low passage rates of its graduates.

According to the charging documents, Palm Beach School of Nursing's objective was "to prepare students to meet Florida's licensing and nursing board requirements and become eligible to take the national licensing exam in order to work as registered nurses."

However, federal prosecutors said aspiring nurses never completed the necessary courses and clinicals. Iinstead, they used fake diplomas and transcripts purchased from the owner and employees of Palm Beach School of Nursing to obtain licenses and employment with unwitting health care providers across the nation.

Federal officials have indicted four people from Palm Beach County on wire fraud and conspiracy charges: Krystal Lopez, the Palm Beach School of Nursing's director of finance; Norberto Lopez, owner and operator of of the Nursing Education Agency, a limited-liability corporation based in Palm Beach County; Damian Lopez, owner and operator of EDUconnect, a limited-liability corporation based in Palm Beach County, and Cassandre Jean, owner and operator of Success Review International Services, a company based in Brooklyn, New York.

A fifth Palm Beach County resident, Johanah Napoleon, owner and president of the Palm Beach School of Nursing, pleaded guilty in November to charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and is scheduled to be sentenced in March.

"Ms. Napoleon is very remorseful for her conduct and is doing everything within her ability to make amends for her actions, " said her attorney, Joel DeFabio, adding that he could not comment on the facts of the case. Messages left for attorneys representing Jean and the Lopezes were not immediately returned Thursday.

Nursing degrees sold for $10,000 to $17,000, traced to Virginia instructor

Investigators say Damian, Norberto and Krystal Lopez, along with Jean, conspired with Napoleon and others to commit wire fraud. According to federal prosecutors, Napoleon conspired with a nursing school instructor in Virginia, with the instructor selling RN degrees for $17,000 and LPN degrees for $10,000.

As a part of the the scheme, the instructor directed purchasers to complete certain forms, including an application for the Palm Beach School of Nursing, court documents showed.

The purchasers were instructed to not complete dates on the forms, since the paperwork would be backdated to make it appear that they were students in or before December 2019, which was the Palm Beach School of Nursing's last graduating class. Napoleon and others added the false information, then sent to the documents to be distributed to the purchasers, court records said.

The charges speak to the purpose of a nursing license, which is to protect the public from harm by setting minimum qualifications and competencies.

"Not only is this a public safety concern, it also tarnishes the reputation of nurses who actually complete the demanding clinical and course work required to obtain their professional licenses and employment," Markenzy Lapointe, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said at a news conference Wednesday.

He added that "a fraud scheme like this erodes public trust in our health care system."

Julius Whigham II is a criminal justice and public safety reporter for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at jwhigham@pbpost.com and follow him on Twitter at @JuliusWhigham. Help support our work: Subscribe today.