NEW YORK – Five nursing schools here have been accused of ripping off hundreds of Caribbean students of six million US dollars and granting them bogus certification, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said here late yesterday.
Some Caribbean students studied for two years and paid up to 20,000 US dollars to receive training they thought would allow them to take the New York State Nursing Board Exam, he added.
He said the schools in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island preyed mostly on Caribbean immigrants and even coordinated with a nursing programme in Jamaica to provide fraudulent documents. The Jamaican scheme was not named.
“These conspirators intentionally targeted people in pursuit of new opportunities, lining their pockets with others’ hard-earned money,” said Schneiderman in a statement.
Eleven people who owned or operated the schools were indicted on charges of theft and scheming to defraud. The indictment accuses them of operating a fraudulent nursing school and college scheme.
Eight people linked to the schools were arrested in early-morning raids yesterday, while police sought three others, the attorney general said.
An undercover operation using investigators posing as potential nursing students found four out of the five schools were unauthorised to operate in the state and closed them down, Schneideman said.
The accused faced serious theft and scheming to defraud charges that each offer jail terms of between four and seven years, the attorney general’s office.
The key defendents are Robinson Akenami, owner and operator of Helping Angels Foundation of America, which had offices in Brooklyn and Long Island; Jocelyn Allrick, who owned and operated Hope-VTEC in Long Island; Nadege Auguste, owner and operator of Life-VTEC in Queens; and Andre Castage, an administrator who allegedly told students the school was accredited, according to the indictment.
Another seven people — Carline D’Haiti, Salvatrice Gaston of Envison Review Center in Brooklyn, Anthony Myers, Rodye Paquiot and Carl Lee Sellers – were officials and operators who the indictment alleges told students their schools were accredited and that they would eligible to sit for the nursing certification exam.
Frantz Simeon, owner and executive director and Jude Valles, who established the VTEC franchise, allegedly received payments for the students that attended the schools in New York, and provided false documents to the schools and students, officials said.
Jamaican Paula Haughton, 49, who said she wanted to be a nurse since she was a little girl, told the New York Daily News she paid six thousand dollars to ILPN nursing school on Flatbush Avenue Avenue in Brooklyn.
“My heart is broken right now,” said Haughton, a mother of four who moved to the US in 1981. “I’m still trying to get over it. It’s too much to handle. My dream is shattered.
“It was a lot of work,” the Brooklyn resident told the paper. “A lot of sleepless nights doing the research and studying. I was very, very disappointed to find out that I had wasted all this time, money and energy and everything, and it wasn’t real.” (CMC)