It’s a Barnum and Bailey world, just as phony as it can be.
If you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of Americans with a diploma mill degree or other form of faked credentials… if you’re actively impersonating someone with legitimate credentials… you know what you need to do: Keep your head down, do the best job you can without any training, and hope no one notices your fraudulence.
But if you’re one of the Americans who has hired one of these birds — if you’re someone like Gerald Weiss, a doctor specializing in pain management who never checked his nurse’s credentials, and who was recently shocked to discover that Betty Lichtenstein used his prescription slips to maintain her pain meds addiction — you’re either a fool or something darker.
Weiss’s nurse — a total fake — was found out when a patient complained to the authorities about some botched and painful needlework she endured from addled pretend Betty. (Did the patient complain to Weiss? If not, why not?)
So – Weiss has a nurse with no credentials. She’s a nurse-impersonator. She’s so incompetent patients complain to the authorities. She steals his prescription pads and forges his name so she can steal 96 Oxycodone pills.
Let Weiss here stand for all the police departments, school systems, national security agencies, and, yes, sometimes universities, that can’t be bothered to check simple online registries or transcripts in order to protect the health and welfare of other people.
Weiss’s negligence is so extreme – comically extreme – that you wonder whether he and Nurse Betty are in cahoots.
August 8th, 2009 at 7:09PM
I’m impressed with the fake "Nurse of the Year" banquet she threw herself. That’s going deep in the con.
August 8th, 2009 at 7:21PM
I agree the awards dinner was impressive.
On the other hand, the first rule of the diploma mill degree holder or fake/nonexistent credentials holder, according to UD, is KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN.
August 9th, 2009 at 9:32AM
But you don’t keep your head down with the mark. The more noise you make, the more convincing you look. And keep in mind that the noise she was making was not with the patients: it was with her boss. If her technical skills had been a little better she’d still be conning them.