Johanah Napoleon, former president and owner of the Palm Beach School of Nursing in West Palm Beach, Fla., has been sentenced to 21 months in prison for awarding at least 7,600 fake diplomas, according to a July 25 report from Medscape.
In addition to the prison time, Ms. Napoleon has been ordered to pay $3.5 million in fines, $2.6 million of which she has already paid.
Ms. Napoleon was originally charged in 2021 along with two owners of nursing schools in Maryland and Virginia.
She pleaded guilty to selling fake degrees for between $6,000 and $18,000. The Florida Board of Nursing shut down her school in 2017 for its low passing rate on the national licensing exam.
Purchasers of the fake degrees received transcripts showing they had completed coursework. Some of the 2,800 buyers passed the national licensing exam, becoming registered nurses around the country.
Originally, the sentencing guidelines for Ms. Napoleon recommended four years, but her lawyer requested a lower sentence due to her cooperation with the ongoing federal investigation.
She will appear as a government witness in a November trial against 14 defendants in the case involving the Palm Beach School.
State boards have been trying to locate nurses who received fake degrees, with the New York nursing board asking 903 nurses in March to either submit proof of appropriate education or surrender their licenses.