Fate of trio accused of running nursing ‘diploma mill’ in hands of South Florida jury

The fate of three people accused of playing critical roles in a South Florida nursing-school “diploma mill” is in the hands of a federal jury, which began deliberations Thursday following a three-week trial that focused on allegations of fraud and greed.

The defendants, a former registrar for the defunct Palm Beach School of Nursing and two recruiters from the Northeast, are accused of luring thousands of students to the school and charging them millions of dollars for fake transcripts and degrees so they could qualify to attain licenses as nurses.

During closing arguments Thursday in Fort Lauderdale federal court, prosecutors said that more than 3,500 students paid between $10,000 and $20,000 for bogus academic credentials from the school — after Florida regulators had shut it down in 2018 — so they could sit for licensing exams in New York and gain employment in the healthcare field without proper training.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jon Juenger told jurors that the case represented “the absolute corruption of the nursing field by these defendants and others who worked with them. ... This was all a shortcut designed to make money.”

The three defendants — Gail Russ, 72, the former nursing school registrar; Cassandre Jean, 38, a student recruiter from New York; and Vilaire Duroseau, 58, a recruiter from New Jersey — are charged with conspiring to commit wire fraud and several wire fraud counts that carry up to 20 years in prison. They are the remaining defendants of 14 originally charged in January; 11 pleaded guilty and cooperated with authorities, including several who testified at trial.

Attorneys for the three defendants countered during closing arguments that they did legitimate work, looked out for the interests of students and tried to raise doubts about the charges by focusing on the government’s star witness: the former owner of Palm Beach School of Nursing, Johanah Napoleon. She had hired Russ as a permanent employee and collaborated with Jean and Duroseau as associates through 2021. Before trial, Napoleon pleaded guilty to a wire fraud conspiracy, was sentenced to 21 months in prison and paid about $3.5 million in financial penalties to the U.S. government.

Napoleon “lies about so many things,” said attorney Grey Tesh, who represented Russ, claiming she was a hard-working, salaried employee who was well liked by her colleagues at Palm Beach School of Nursing.

“[Napoleon] comes in here and says what she needs to say to keep her family safe,” said lawyer Rod Vereen, who represented Jean, a registered nurse who referred students from New York to the Palm Beach school.

“This lady could sell ice to the Eskimos,” said attorney Martin Beguiristain, who represented Duroseau, a New Jersey educator who once ran a nursing school.

“She has played the government all the way through this,” Beguiristain added, accusing prosecutors of making a sweetheart deal with Napoleon, who may receive even less prison time for her testimony.

Prosecutor Christopher Clark, in a rebuttal to the defense, said “there was no fraud perpetrated on the court or the government” by Napoleon.

Clark argued that the defense attorneys were trying to distract jurors by condemning her as a witness. “The common denominator here is greed — it’s to make money,” Clark reminded the 12 jurors.

At the beginning of this year, prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami rattled the healthcare industry and Haitian-American community when they unveiled a batch of criminal cases charging about 25 defendants who had ownership interests in or worked as employees and recruiters for Palm Beach School of Nursing — as well as other for-profit schools, including Sacred Heart International Institute and Siena College of Health in Broward County. Almost all of those defendants have pleaded guilty.

The network of nursing school operators, centered in South Florida, illegally charged each student between $10,000 for a licensed practical nurse degree and $20,000 for a registered nurse diploma — without requiring proper training, according to federal authorities and court records. The fake diplomas also came with phony transcripts to bolster the “fraudulent” nursing students’ records, federal prosecutors said in court papers.

In doing so, the scofflaw 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.

Many of the students who purchased degrees were from South Florida’s Haitian-American community, including some with legitimate LPN licenses who wanted to become registered nurses, U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe said at a news conference earlier this year. Other students were recruited from out of state to participate in the fraudulent nursing programs.

An estimated 7,600 students paid a total of $114 million for bogus nursing degrees from the South Florida schools and other suspect programs between 2016 and 2021. Of those, one-third, or about 2,400 students, ended up passing their licensing exams, mainly in New York, which imposes no limit on the number of times that students can take the exam. Nurses certified in New York have the ability to practice in other states, including Florida.

Many of the students who passed the nursing exams have lost their certification — though they won’t be criminally charged, according to federal authorities. At the beginning of the year, the FBI said it notified nursing boards in all 50 states about every student who obtained a fake nursing degree and passed the exam.

Prosecutors said Thursday that many had their nursing licenses suspended or they were fired. They also said that the victims in this case were mainly the “unwitting” healthcare providers who spent millions of dollars on services by unqualified nurses.