New Mexico woman is latest accused of impersonating RN in growing crackdown
A patient rehabilitation center in New Mexico is the latest organization suspected of having an imposter nurse on staff, with the state healthcare authority looking into the incident.
According to local KFOX14, the facility is Las Cruces Wellness & Rehabilitation, which allegedly had Margarita Gonzalez on staff for months before the Texas Board of Nursing discovered a potential issue. Authorities said Gonzalez used the license numbers of nurses with similar names, effectively stealing their identity to gain employment.
Her alleged fraud was uncovered after two facilities in the state reported discrepancies in Gonzalez’s provided work history and personal identification—including her Social Security number. This spurred state authorities to investigate who she was.
By the time the alleged scheme was uncovered, Gonzalez was already working as a nurse and caring for patients at Las Cruces Wellness & Rehabilitation—which has not been accused of being aware of the scheme. However, an attorney told reporters that if the organization was negligent in conducting the appropriate credential and background checks, it could open itself up to fines or civil lawsuits.
The lawsuits could come from patients, though there are no reports of any being injured.
Gonzalez is no longer employed as a nurse, and her case has been handed over to the district attorney’s office. She is facing prosecution but has not been officially charged, and remains innocent until proven guilty.
According to local NBC affiliate KTSM, she was impersonating a registered nurse (RN) and had also sought work at Mountain View Nursing and Rehabilitation in El Paso and AVIR at Patriot in El Paso. While she accepted multiple positions, she never actually cared directly for patients in those other roles.
Further details are unknown to the public at this time.
States fight back against imposter nurses
There have been numerous arrests of so-called “fake nurses” in recent months, including a case where a woman in Florida allegedly worked as an RN for 18 months at a hospital before she was found to have used another woman’s identity to get the job.
During that time, she cared for as many as 4,000 patients.
Earlier this month, a Las Vegas woman was arrested and charged with 50 counts of fraud stemming from the alleged operation of a healthcare business without a license, where she is accused of posing as an RN and forging the signatures of doctors to issue prescriptions.
Many of these cases may be related to the Operation Nightingale stings, where organizations posed as nursing schools, issuing bogus certifications that individuals would then use to obtain nursing licenses.
So far over 30 people have been convicted by the U.S. Department of Justice as part of those ongoing investigations.
In many cases, these fake nurses are traveling from state to state to obtain work and avoid detection. As no national repository of information exists to track these people, multiple states—including Arizona, Texas and Georgia—have set up their own living lists of suspected frauds, which employers can check when hiring nursing staff.
Experts who spoke with the Washington Post, which released a major report on the issue, hypothesized that nationwide clinician shortages have, unfortunately, led many down this deceptive “career” path.
Chad is an award-winning writer and editor with over 15 years of experience working in media. He has a decade-long professional background in healthcare, working as a writer and in public relations.