Carleen Health Institute Lawsuit Update: Charges and Nurse Fallout

The Carleen Health Institute lawsuit currently before a federal court is the criminal trial of founder Carleen Noreus, who is being prosecuted in Fort Lauderdale on a 10-count indictment charging conspiracy, wire fraud, and money laundering tied to the sale of thousands of fraudulent nursing diplomas. The trial opened June 1, 2026, before U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal, and it is the last contested case in the federal investigation known as Operation Nightingale. It is also the first in that sweep to tie the diploma fraud to a patient’s death.¹²

What Carleen Health Institute Was

Noreus ran two South Florida campuses: Carleen Home Health School in Plantation, where she was president, and Carleen Home Health School II in West Palm Beach, where she was vice president.¹ The schools began unraveling before the federal charges. In April 2022, the Florida Commission for Independent Education denied a change-of-ownership application and ordered the West Palm Beach campus to close in an orderly fashion.³

When state regulators made an unannounced visit on February 2, 2023, they found the campus closed and locked. The Commission then ordered the school to stop all operations and turn over detailed student and faculty records.³ Eight days later, at an emergency meeting on February 10, 2023, the Commission ordered Carleen and six other implicated schools to immediately halt enrollments and graduations.⁴

The wider investigation, announced January 25, 2023, by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida along with the FBI and HHS Office of Inspector General, initially charged 25 people connected to Florida-based schools that distributed more than 7,600 fraudulent diplomas and transcripts and generated over $114 million in revenue. Buyers used the documents to sit for the national licensing exam and take nursing jobs across the country.⁵

The Charges Against Carleen Noreus

A federal grand jury indicted Noreus in February 2025 on 10 counts including conspiracy, wire fraud, and money laundering.⁶ She pleaded not guilty. Of every defendant charged in Operation Nightingale, she is the only one who rejected a plea deal and went to trial.²

Prosecutors, led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Clark, allege Noreus enrolled roughly 2,750 students between 2018 and 2023, charging each student $10,000 to $20,000 for fraudulent nursing diplomas and transcripts. The government says she collected approximately $10 million and coached students to pass state licensing exams rather than providing real clinical training.¹²

Stanton Witherspoon, whom Noreus hired in October 2020 to serve as president of the West Palm Beach school, is on the government’s witness list. Witherspoon was separately indicted January 12, 2023, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in August 2023, and was sentenced to 41 months in prison with $3.5 million in restitution, beginning January 31, 2024.⁷¹

The Patient Death Allegation

What sets this trial apart is the government’s claim that a Carleen diploma buyer went on to cause a patient’s death. Prosecutors allege that a student who bought a fake associate’s degree from Noreus completed only a few part-time classes, passed the registered nurse licensing exam in early 2021, and took work as a traveling nurse.²

Court filings describe events on August 2, 2023, at a Missouri hospital. According to prosecutors, the nurse was caring for a patient who developed atrial fibrillation, failed to notify the attending physician in time, tried to infuse liquids through a compromised IV line without checking access, did not respond to emergency alerts, attempted to feed the patient while the patient was vomiting and struggling to breathe, and failed to document the death in the medical chart. The patient died within two hours.⁸

The nurse, identified in the indictment only as “co-conspirator No. 1,” had previously been terminated from a Phoenix hospital over patient safety concerns before being hired in Missouri in May 2023. She was fired from the Missouri hospital a few months later.⁸

Noreus is not charged in connection with the death. Prosecutors are using the incident to show what they call the real-world consequences of selling fake credentials. Judge Singhal limited how far they can go, restricting testimony about the nurse to her “lack of competence” rather than allowing broader medical malpractice arguments.¹

How the Defense Is Responding

Defense attorney Andrew Feldman has described Noreus as an “honest nurse and businesswoman.” He has told jurors the case “is not about medical malpractice” and that the Missouri nurse’s errors “have nothing to do with Carleen Noreus.”¹

Feldman has also challenged the government’s framing of the diplomas themselves. “The government can say ‘fake school, fake diploma,’ but these nurses have never practiced without a license,” he argued, pointing to the fact that graduates sat for and passed the official nursing licensing exam.²

Before trial, Feldman moved to exclude the patient death evidence entirely, calling it irrelevant, prejudicial, and an attempt to “demonize” his client. The judge allowed the evidence but imposed the scope limits described above.⁹

What Happened to Nurses With Carleen Diplomas

If you are a patient, employer, or nurse trying to understand the practical fallout, the licensing response has varied sharply by state. Federal authorities have directed all state licensing boards to report adverse actions against nurses tied to the scheme to the National Practitioner Data Bank, flagging “Operation Nightingale” in the report.¹⁰

Delaware annulled 26 nursing licenses tied to the scandal.¹¹ Kentucky flagged 20 Florida schools as “problematic” and warned applicants with degrees from those programs to expect additional scrutiny and possible denial.¹² North Dakota advised that graduates of the implicated programs could be deemed ineligible for licensure without proof of accredited clinical training.¹³ Maryland’s Board of Nursing has issued summary suspensions, revoked licenses, and accepted voluntary surrenders from dozens of nurses tied to the scheme, with disciplinary orders spanning 2022 through 2023.¹⁴

Florida’s response has been uneven. The Florida Board of Nursing has stopped issuing new licenses to graduates of the implicated schools and has revoked the licenses of 47 nurses linked to the fraud. But an Orlando Sentinel investigation published in May 2026 found the board has allowed dozens of nurses with degrees from Operation Nightingale schools, including Carleen Health Institute, to keep practicing in Florida. Nurses can retain licensure by completing additional board-approved education, and in some instances the board denied “multi-state upgrades” to nurses with Carleen diplomas while leaving basic Florida licenses intact.¹⁵

That inconsistency reaches into the Noreus case itself. Florida officials are moving to sanction a nurse named Tahira Bastien, who holds a Florida license and was barred from practicing in Missouri in 2023 following a patient death at a St. Louis hospital. As of the latest reporting, Bastien remained eligible to work in Florida while awaiting an administrative hearing.²

Where the Case Stands

The Noreus trial was ongoing as of early June 2026, with no verdict yet. If she is convicted on all counts, she faces substantial prison time on the conspiracy, wire fraud, and money laundering charges. The government’s witness list includes Witherspoon as a cooperating witness and several former students who allegedly bought diplomas.¹ Outside the courtroom, state boards are still working through the credentials of nurses who graduated from the network of implicated schools, an effort that by some estimates has touched roughly 15,000 fraudulent degrees across more than 20 schools.²

1
Miami Herald. Carleen Noreus Federal Trial
2
Becker’s Hospital Review. Operation Nightingale Reaches Trial
3
Texas Board of Nursing. Carleen Health Institute of South Florida Record
4
Home Care Association of Florida. Nursing Degree Scheme Results in More Than 7,600 Fraudulent Nurses
5
HHS-OIG. Operation Nightingale Media Materials
6
Newstimes. CT Nurse License Suspended Over Fake Degree
7
Liberia Public Radio. Stanton A. Witherspoon Faces 41 Months Imprisonment Over Wire Fraud
8
Miami Herald. Nurse Linked to Patient Death in Noreus Case
9
Miami Herald. Noreus Patient Death Evidence Motion
10
NPDB. Operation Nightingale Reporting Guidance
11
Delaware Board of Nursing. Annulled License List
12
Kentucky Board of Nursing. Operation Nightingale
13
North Dakota Board of Nursing. Notice to Graduates of Certain Florida-Based Nursing Education Programs
14
Maryland Board of Nursing. Operation Nightingale
15
Orlando Sentinel. Florida’s Oversight Erratic After Fake Nurse Diploma Scandal