A Florida nursing-school operator who sold nearly 3,000 fake diplomas is going to federal prison for more than seven years — and for the first time in the sprawling “Operation Nightingale” prosecutions, the government put a name and a patient’s death behind one of those diplomas.
A sentence below the guidelines, but far above what she asked for
Carleen Noreus, 52, of Plantation, Florida, was sentenced Sept. 15, 2026, in federal court in Fort Lauderdale to 87 months in prison — seven years and three months — plus two years of supervised release. U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal handed down the sentence after Noreus pleaded guilty in June, mid-trial, to two federal counts: conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Federal sentencing guidelines called for 188 to 235 months. Singhal’s sentence landed well below that range — but well above the five years her defense attorneys had asked the court to impose.
2,956 diplomas, two schools, seven years
Noreus was president of Carleen Home Health School, Inc. in Plantation and vice president of a second school, Carleen Home Health School II, Inc., in West Palm Beach. Prosecutors said that from April 2018 through October 2025, she and her co-conspirators issued 2,956 fraudulent nursing diplomas and transcripts to people who had not completed the coursework or clinical hours required for Registered Nurse, Licensed Practical Nurse, or Bachelor of Science in Nursing credentials — charging $10,000 to $20,000 per diploma.
Noreus is one of dozens of defendants charged as part of Operation Nightingale, the multi-year federal crackdown that has traced roughly 7,600 fraudulent nursing credentials nationwide back to a handful of South Florida diploma mills.
The diploma prosecutors connected to a death
For the first time in an Operation Nightingale case, prosecutors laid out in court how one of those diplomas reached a hospital floor. According to court filings, Tahira Bastien received a nursing diploma and transcript from a Noreus-run school after roughly two months of part-time coursework. She went on to pass the NCLEX licensing exam and was working as a nurse at a St. Louis–area hospital by August 2023.
Prosecutors say Bastien was caring for a patient in atrial fibrillation whose condition was worsening that month — and did not notify a physician or a supervising nurse before the patient died. Missouri barred Bastien from practicing in the state in 2023. She still holds a Florida nursing license; Florida regulators have moved to sanction her, and a hearing is pending. She has not been criminally charged in connection with the patient’s death.
I’ve precepted plenty of new grads who could barely find a stethoscope on their first shift — that’s normal, that’s what orientation and a preceptorship are for. What isn’t normal is a nurse whose entire “education” was two months of part-time coursework, walking onto a floor with the same license I earned after two years of clinical rotations and a licensing exam I actually had to study for. The unnerving part of this case isn’t just the fraud. It’s that prosecutors say roughly 2,274 of the diplomas sold through these schools led to a passed NCLEX and a real hospital badge before anyone caught it.
What happens to the other 2,274
Noreus’s sentence is the longest reported so far in Operation Nightingale, which has produced convictions against school operators and recruiters across multiple South Florida diploma mills since 2023. State boards of nursing, including Florida’s, have been working through lists of graduates tied to the implicated schools — revoking or suspending licenses where coursework and clinical hours can’t be verified — but the process has been slow, and this outlet has not found a public accounting of how many of the roughly 7,600 credentials nationwide have been reviewed to date. Bastien’s case is the first the government has connected directly to a patient’s death.