A woman who authorities say spent more than $2,000 to stage a dinner honouring her as ‘Nurse of the Year’ faces charges, after it turned out she isn’t a nurse at all.
Fifty-six-year-old Betty Lichtenstein of Norwalk, Connecticut was charged on Thursday with pretending to be a nurse at a doctor’s office.
Prosecutors say her employer, Dr. Gerald Weiss, believed Lichtenstein was a registered nurse, especially after she was named the Connecticut Nursing Association’s ‘Nurse of the Year’ in 2008.
According to the arrest warrant, there’s no such thing as the Connecticut Nursing Association.
The state’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit began investigating after a patient complained about Lichtenstein. She faces up to five years in prison if convicted of reckless endangerment and criminal impersonation charges.