Shannon Nicole Womack, 39, posed as a nurse using at least 10 aliases in Pennsylvania. Photo / 123rf
Pennsylvania police say a woman posed as a nurse to fraudulently treat patients in facilities across the state in an elaborate racketeering scheme involving at least 10 aliases.
Shannon Nicole Womack, 39, was charged with identity theft, forgery, endangering the welfare of care and other charges, Pennsylvania state police said.
She is also suspected of impersonating four nurses from United States Southern states and using their identities to secure short-term nursing stints, police said, adding that their investigation identified approximately 20 aliases and seven Social Security numbers associated with her.
Once employed at these facilities under false or stolen identities, she diverted patients’ prescription medications, authorities said.
“She was very crafty at this whole organisation,” state police spokesman Rocco Gagliardi said in an interview, adding that police uncovered outstanding warrants against her in Georgia, Tennessee, New Jersey and Indiana, including on charges of fraud and practising nursing without a licence.
“Once the states get a hold of her in any sort of way, she would just bounce to a different one.”
The alleged scheme began in 2020, police said in a statement, adding that Womack used aliases to pose as a licensed practical nurse, registered nurse and registered nurse supervisor at rehabilitation and nursing home facilities across Pennsylvania.
Womack was not licensed as a medical professional in the state, according to an arrest affidavit signed by State Trooper Anthony Sayles. Georgia lists Womack on its Nursing Impostor Alerts system, which states that Womack is “neither licensed as a registered or practical nurse in Georgia nor has she applied for licensure”.
Womack, whose alleged aliases included “Shannon Abiola-Parham,” “Shannon Nicole Robinson” and “Shannon Nicole Lawson,” was able to secure nursing jobs “by submitting fraudulently signed documents” to staffing agencies and also by creating a false limited liability company to “deploy herself to multiple jobs”, according to Pennsylvania State Police.
The Washington Post could not immediately identify a lawyer for Womack today.
Authorities in Pennsylvania said they began investigating Womack in April after a traffic stop when she was driving on Interstate 79 in Washington County.
Authorities executed a search warrant on Womack’s car and found “multiple forms of identification, prescription medications prescribed to different victims, medical documents, and various pieces of medical equipment,” police said.
Even once Womack was in custody in Pennsylvania, authorities struggled to confirm her identity because she used so many aliases and Social Security numbers across different states, Gagliardi said.
“She went to really great lengths to pursue this … idea to take nurses’ information, use it as her own, and it was really lengthy research and development on her own account, because for five years, she was running the game.”
According to the criminal complaint against her, investigators found that Womack was suspected of stealing opioid medications from patients in some of the Pennsylvania facilities she worked in between October and April.
All of the facilities had placed her on their do-not-retain lists for professional misconduct after she worked for them for short stints.
One of those facilities, Saint Mary’s Home of Erie in western Pennsylvania, said in a statement that Womack worked one shift there and that its staff “immediately requested that the assigning agency place Ms. Womack on a do-not-retain list because of Ms. Womack’s unprofessional performance”.
It said Womack “did not have any further contact with the facility or its residents”.
In yesterday’s news conference, Washington County District Attorney Jason Walsh said Womack committed a “vile act” by “not only taking advantage of older citizens in this commonwealth, but them not receiving the care that they need, nor the medication that they need, because of someone that puts themselves in this position to defraud them”.
Walsh said the charges filed against Womack this week related to the crimes she is alleged to have committed in Pennsylvania.
Womack is being held at Washington County jail and is awaiting a hearing scheduled for next week on the charges tied to her April traffic stop, as well as a hearing scheduled for next month on the remaining charges, Gagliardi said.