Carleen Noreus, the Florida nursing school operator who pleaded guilty mid-trial in June to running a diploma-mill scheme, was sentenced Sept. 15 to 87 months in prison, according to a Sept. 16 report by the Miami Herald. The sentence, handed down by U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal in Fort Lauderdale, fell well below the 188- to 235-month range calculated under federal sentencing guidelines but exceeded the five years her defense attorneys had requested.
Noreus was convicted on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering after prosecutors said she and co-conspirators sold nearly 3,000 fraudulent nursing diplomas and transcripts through two now-shuttered South Florida schools between 2018 and 2023, charging as much as $12,000 to $16,000 per student as demand grew. According to the Herald, prosecutors said Noreus earned about $10 million from the scheme and “participated in every aspect of planning and organizing” it, a characterization her attorneys disputed, arguing she was not shown to have directed others’ conduct.
The case marked the first in Operation Nightingale in which prosecutors alleged a fraudulently credentialed nurse contributed to a patient’s death. Prosecutors identified the nurse as Tahira Bastien, who received a diploma and transcript from a Noreus school after roughly two months of part-time study, passed the NCLEX exam and was later working at a St. Louis hospital when a patient in atrial fibrillation died in August 2023 after Bastien failed to notify a physician or supervising nurse as the patient’s condition worsened. The defense disputed any connection between Noreus and the death, though it acknowledged Noreus backdated Bastien’s transcript.
Noreus’s attorneys sought leniency partly by pointing to roughly $4 million she had agreed to forfeit, which they described as effectively bankrupting her. The final forfeiture amount had not been resolved as of sentencing, with a separate hearing expected, the Herald reported.
Noreus was among roughly 50 nursing school operators charged since the Justice Department first announced Operation Nightingale in January 2023, when 25 people were charged in connection with more than 7,600 fraudulent diplomas sold from three now-shuttered schools. Other defendants in the scheme have received considerably lighter sentences after pleading guilty and cooperating with investigators, including three defendants sentenced in April 2026 to prison terms and fines following a separate trial. Noreus was one of the only defendants to take her case to a jury rather than reach a plea deal.
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