Cedar Rapids woman with fake nursing degree challenges revocation

A Cedar Rapids woman is contesting the state’s decision to revoke her license, arguing she’s the innocent victim of a Florida diploma mill that awarded her a fraudulent degree in nursing.

According to records of the Iowa Board of Nursing, Helena Dahnweih first submitted an application for licensure in Iowa as a registered nurse in early 2019. At the time, she indicated she had received her nursing associate degree in 2017 from Med-Life Institute in West Palm Beach, Fla. Her college transcript said she attended the institute for 10 months, from February 2017 through December 2017.

Dahnweih passed the National Council Licensure Examination in March 2019 and one month later the Board of Nursing granted her a license.

In July 2021, the National Council of State Boards of Nursing announced an FBI investigation, code-named Operation Nightingale, into nursing education programs suspected of selling fake diplomas and transcripts. One of the businesses implicated in the investigation was the Med-Life Institute.

It and others were alleged to have sold diplomas and to have encouraged “students” to apply for licensure in states thought to exercise a lower level of scrutiny on practitioners, and in states like Iowa that do not limit the number of times a person can take the National Council Licensure Examination.

According to the board, Dahnweih acknowledged she did not participate in any nursing coursework or clinical education at the institute, but did take a review course for the national licensure exam.

In May 2023, the Board of Nursing accused Dahnweih of fraud. She contested the charge and at a board hearing on the matter in July, she argued that she had believed her degree was legitimate.

The board ruled it did not find her claims to be credible and in September it revoked her license, stating that the wrongdoing in her case was “particularly egregious.”

Dahnweih recently filed a petition in Polk County District Court seeking judicial review of that decision, arguing that the Florida school had “preyed upon” her and that her application for an Iowa license was made in good faith. She also argues that the board incorrectly concluded that she had knowingly provided the board with a false college transcript.

“Not only did Mrs. Dahnweih not provide the transcript to the Iowa Board of Nursing — as it is the policy for the board to accept transcripts only from the schools themselves — but she did not know what the transcript contained,” the petition states. “The board convicted Mrs. Dahnweih of fraud with absolutely no evidence that Mrs. Dahnweih knowingly or purposefully engaged in some scheme to deceive the Iowa Board of Nursing.”

The nursing board has yet to file a response to the petition.

This article first appeared in the Iowa Capital Dispatch.