Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, PhD, MBA, RN, the new president of the American Nurses Association, also weighed in. "The accusation that personnel at once-accredited nursing schools allegedly participated in this scheme is simply deplorable. These unlawful and unethical acts disparage the reputation of actual nurses everywhere who have rightfully earned [their titles] through their education, hard work, dedication and time."

The false degrees and transcripts were issued by three once-accredited and now-shuttered nursing schools in South Florida: Palm Beach School of Nursing, Sacred Heart International Institute, and Sienna College.

The alleged co-conspirators reportedly made $114 million from the scheme, which dates back to 2016, according to several news reports. Each defendant faces up to 20 years in prison.

Most LPN programs charge $10,000 to $15,000 to complete a program, Robert Rosseter, a spokesperson for the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), told Medscape Medical News.

None were AACN members, and none were accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, which is AACN's autonomous accrediting agency, Rosseter said. AACN membership is voluntary and is open to schools offering baccalaureate or higher degrees, he explained.

"What is disturbing about this investigation is that there are over 7600 people around the country with fraudulent nursing credentials who are potentially in critical health care roles treating patients," Chad Yarbrough, acting special agent in charge for the FBI in Miami, said in the federal justice department release.

"Operation Nightingale" Based on Tip

The federal action, dubbed "Operation Nightingale" after the nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale, began in 2019. It was based on a tip related to a case in Maryland, according to Nurse.org.

That case ensnared Palm Beach School of Nursing owner Johanah Napoleon, who reportedly was selling fake degrees for $6000 to $18000 each to two individuals in Maryland and Virginia. Napoleon was charged in 2021 and eventually pled guilty. The Florida Board of Nursing shut down the Palm Beach school in 2017 owing to its students' low passing rate on the national licensing exam.

Two participants in the bigger scheme who had also worked with Napoleon, Geralda Adrien and Woosvelt Predestin, were indicted in 2021. Adrien owned private education companies for people who at aspired to be nurses, and Predestin was an employee. They were sentenced to 27 months in prison last year and helped the federal officials build the larger case.

The 25 individuals who were charged January 25 operated in Delaware, New York, New Jersey, Texas, and Florida.

In the scheme involving Siena College, some of the individuals acted as recruiters to direct nurses who were looking for employment to the school, where they allegedly would then pay for an RN or LPN/VN degree. The recipients of the false documents then used them to obtain jobs, including at a hospital in Georgia and a Veterans Affairs medical center in Maryland, according to one indictment. The president of Siena and her co-conspirators sold more than 2000 fake diplomas, according to charging documents.

At the Palm Beach College of Nursing, individuals at various nursing prep and education programs allegedly helped others obtain fake degrees and transcripts, which were then used to pass RN and LPN/VN licensing exams in states that included Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Ohio, according to the indictment.

Some individuals then secured employment with a nursing home in Ohio, a home health agency for pediatric patients in Massachusetts, and skilled nursing facilities in New York and New Jersey.

Prosecutors allege that the president of Sacred Heart International Institute and two other co-conspirators sold 588 fake diplomas.

The FBI said that some of the aspiring nurses who were talked into buying the degrees were LPNs who wanted to become RNs and that most of those lured into the scheme were from South Florida's Haitian American immigrant community, Nurse.org reported.

Wild Apricot software is designed for associations, clubs, non-profits, and member-based organizations. This page provides an overview of how Wild Apricot can be used to manage your members and other contacts (such as newsletter subscribers, donors, event attendees, and volunteers).

What you need to know

• Everyone in your Wild Apricot database is a  contact . A contact can be a member, an event attendee, a donor, a newsletter subscriber, or any combination of these roles.
  
  
• Contacts can be added automatically through your website, added manually by an administrator, or imported in bulk. For more information, see  Adding a new contact manually .
  
  
• You don't have to set the passwords yourself when adding members in bulk from a spreadsheet. Instead, following the import, you can send the new members an email blast including the {Contact_Password_Reset_URL} macro, which will appear as a link they can click on to set their own passwords.
  
  
• Members are a special type of contact. They can have special access to member-only pages and events, and their contact records include membership-related fields such as renewal date and member status. 
  
  
• A contact becomes a member when they are assigned a membership level.
  
  
• Members can add themselves via a online membership application form, or be added manually by an administrator.
  
  
• You can create multiple  membership levels , each with different membership fees, subscription periods, renewals policies, and benefits.
  
  
• Information about each contact is stored in a separate  record , with each record storing different chunks of information in  fields  (e.g. first name, last name, email address).
  
  
• You can customize your contact database – and your forms – by adding, modifying, reordering, and deleting database fields.
  
  
• Wild Apricot database fields are divided into two classes:  common fields  – fields that apply to all records (e.g. first name, last name, email address) – and additional fields that only apply to membership applications, event registrations, or donations. 
  
  
• You can offer discounted group memberships to companies, team, or families by setting up membership bundle levels.
  
  
• You can organize members from different membership levels into member groups according to their interests or participation in committees.
  
  
• Members can be listed in a member directory, visible to everyone or just members.
  
  
• You can automate the  membership renewal process  with timed reminders and actions.
  
  
• To fully automate the renewal process, you can set up  recurring payments .
  
  
• Members can perform various self-service functions themselves from their member profile 
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Learn more

So that visitors to your site can donate to your organization, you can add a donation form that integrates with your payment system and contact database.

The donation form displays all the donation fields you have set up. One of your donation fields is the Amount field, a system field that cannot be renamed or deleted. If the visitor viewing the donation form is not logged in, common fields will appear on the form as well. For more information on setting up and using donation forms, see Donation forms.

To enable online donations, you need to set up online payments.

To track the success of your fundraising efforts, you can add a donation goal gadget to a page on your site. You can also embed a Wild Apricot donation form on another website using widgets.

For instructions on inserting, moving, and deleting gadgets, see Gadgets.

You cannot add a donation form gadget – or any other singular gadget – to a page template or system page, or to a page containing another singular gadget.

Learn more

You can adjust the discussion forum gadget settings to control the appearance of the page and the ability of visitors to read, respond to, and post forum topics.

Gadget settings appear in a setting panel on the left side of admin view (which can be hidden to maximize the page design area). To display the settings panel, you position your pointer over the gadget – while editing a site page – then click the gadget's Settings icon.
If you want to learn more about discussion forum settings, check our Discussion forums help topic.

We hear it all the time: “I didn’t know there was software to help us manage our membership!”

If you have members and have to deal with all the tasks that come with it – such as member renewals, membership directories, events, newsletters and more – there’s a membership management solution for that!

At many small membership organizations, the volunteers and staff are trying to do a lot with a little (e.g., limited resources and budgets). It’s good to know that there are technology solutions that can help get your entire team on the right track and reduce wasted time and frustration, so you can focus on growing your membership and meeting your mission.

We've created an in-depth look at membership management software – what it is, how it works, what it costs and how it can help you build a website, connect with your supporters and grow your membership, while saving you time and effort.