South Florida nursing director found guilty for selling nearly 1,000 fake diplomas

A former administrator at a South Florida nursing school was found guilty Wednesday of conspiring with the owner and recruiters to sell about 1,000 fake diplomas for millions of dollars to students recruited from Texas.

Stephanie Dorisca, the ex-director of nursing at Techni-Pro Institute in Boca Raton, was convicted of conspiring to commit wire fraud and five related charges following a three-day jury trial in Fort Lauderdale federal court. Dorisca, 57, of Coral Springs, faces up to 20 years in prison.

Dorisca is among more than 40 people charged over the past three years in a scheme that sold roughly 15,000 phony nursing diplomas to South Florida students who paid more than $220 million for shortcuts in their education, federal authorities say. Many recipients later passed state board exams and obtained registered nursing and licensed practical nursing jobs in Florida, New York, Texas, and other states.

Court records show Dorisca was first charged in September and initially intended to plead guilty to a single wire-fraud conspiracy charge brought by Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Clark, who has prosecuted all nursing-school defendants in the South Florida crackdown. She withdrew from the plea deal in early November, leading to her trial before U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore.

The 12-person jury took less than three hours Wednesday to convict her on all six wire fraud charges in the indictment.

At trial, two Texas recruiters—one who pleaded guilty and another expected to reach a plea deal—testified that they conspired with Dorisca to sell 954 fake nursing degrees at $16,500 each between 2021 and 2022. Dorisca’s share of the scam totaled $1.5 million, according to trial evidence.

Dorisca’s former boss, Gilbert Hyppolite, the owner of the now-defunct Techni-Pro Institute, is still awaiting trial in March.

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