She claimed to be an Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner (ARNP) with a doctoral degree. She was then hired as a nursing administrator and wrote up plans while also attending to patients. She however never had any nursing-related degrees nor possessed any Ph.D as claimed. And has now been arrested for practicing medicine without any valid professional license. Such is the story of 48-year-old Amy Suzanne Pohlman of Jacksonville, Florida.
Pohlman's employer suspected her and investigated her
Pohlman got a job as a nurse administrator with the Ponte Vedra Home Care in October, 2015. She attended to a few patients as a medical professional, wrote healthcare plans for patients and then became an independent care manager with several clients. She also displayed an award allegedly given her by Mayo Clinic's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center in her office, First Coast News reported.
Pohlman's employer was however unable to verify her professional documentations and started to run background checks on her in June, 2016. As soon as Pohlman suspected that she was being in investigated, she quit her job and left. The Ponte Vedra Home Care reported the issue with the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office Special Victims Unit and a medical investigator from the Florida Attorney General's Medicaid Fraud department was assigned the case.
Pohlman is busted, arrested and on $50,000 bail bond
Investigations revealed that Pohlman had lied about everything and had been a fraud all along. She never had any nursing degree and did not have any doctoral degree. She also did not have any valid license to practice nursing or medicine in Florida. The Mayo Clinic award she displayed in her office was actually bought from the Jacksonville trophy shop - a fabricated plaque, AJC wrote.
She has been arrested and charged with practicing without any degrees or licenses. She is currently detained at the St. Johns County Jail on a $50,000 bail. Investigators are researching other charges leveled against her at the moment. Anyone whom she had attended to in a professional nursing or medical capacity has been advised to come forward to help with investigations.
