Over 7,600 fake nursing diplomas and certificates were issued by Florida-based nursing programs, providing a shortcut to nursing students willing to simply pay in order to become a licensed RN, LPN, or LVN. Conspirators fabricated documents indicating that these paying customers satisfied requirements to obtain a nursing diploma, while in reality courses were never taken and hundreds of hours of clinicals never attended.

Three schools were involved in this scheme, perpetrated by college owners, operators, and employees:

• Palm Beach School of Nursing in Palm Beach County, Florida;
• Sacred Heart International Institute in Broward County, Florida; and
• Siena College in Broward County, Florida.

We understand the value our healthcare and hospital clients place on only hiring qualified, competent individuals to perform the serious and sometimes life-saving work that nurses are required to execute. It is important to note that not every graduate of these schools participated in the scheme; many have achieved their nursing degrees with the hard work and dedication required to pass stringent clinical and coursework requirements achieved while these institutions were accredited.

Before this case broke, Certiphi Screening had already identified one of the schools involved - Palm Beach School of Nursing - as an unaccredited institution in 2021 via our proprietary DegreeScan® diploma mill database. In instances where diplomas were verified by Certiphi Screening for the other two institutions, we are hard at work reviewing all cases involved and sending notifications to our clients of our findings. All three institutions are now closed and subsequently added to our DegreeScan® database.

If you as a client have had any verified degrees from these three institutions since 2016, you will be soon notified of our findings.

This is a breaking case and Certiphi Screening will continue to monitor the situation and impact to keep our clients informed. Our exclusive focus on healthcare - providing screening services to over 5,500 organizations in the healthcare industry - means we are attacking this situation with intense focus and expediency to do right by our valued clients. We are actively monitoring this situation and will keep all of our customers up to date with any new developments.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to your Certiphi Screening sales executive, account manager, or our customer service team.

Posted: January 27, 2023

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