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

Jay Weaver, Miami Herald on Dec 4, 2025

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MIAMI — A former administrator at a South Florida nursing school was found guilty Wednesday on charges of collaborating with the owner and recruiters in selling 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 after a three-day jury trial in Fort Lauderdale federal court. Dorisca, 57, of Coral Springs, faces up to 20 years in prison.

Dorisca is the latest of more than 40 people who have been charged over the past three years with selling about 15,000 phony nursing school diplomas to South Florida students who paid more than $220 million to take shortcuts in their education, federal authorities say. Many who obtained the fraudulent degrees later passed state board exams and obtained registered nursing and license practical nursing jobs at hospitals in Florida, New York and Texas, among other states.

According to court records, Dorisca was initially charged in September and intended to plead guilty to a single wire-fraud conspiracy charge brought by Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Clark, who has prosecuted all the nursing-school defendants in the South Florida crackdown. But she backed out of her plea deal in early November, leading to her trial before U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore this week.

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

At trial, two Texas recruiters — one who pleaded guilty and another expected to cut 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: $1.5 million, according to Clark, who prosecuted her case with Assistant U.S. Attorney Jon Juenger.

Still awaiting trial in March: Dorisca’s former boss, Gilbert Hyppolite, the owner of the now-defunct Techni-Pro nursing school.