📰 From the news · Impersonating a real college/agent
A forged enrolment letter, a photo of a degree never earned and a doctored regulator screenshot: the Kingston General Hospital fake nurse who treated an estimated 200 patients unsupervised
Canada regulates nurses province by province. In Ontario the College of Nurses of Ontario keeps the register, and anyone can look up a name and see whether a licence exists. A degree certificate proves study; only the regulator's entry proves the right to practise. The Kingston, Ontario case below shows what happens when an employer accepts pictures of those documents instead of checking the source.
According to CBC News, Madeline Stenhouse had dropped out of nursing school in the autumn of 2019. To Kingston Health Sciences Centre she supplied a forged verification of enrolment from St. Lawrence College showing her in third year, a photo of a degree she had not earned, and a doctored screenshot of the College of Nurses of Ontario website that appeared to show a licence and registration number. From August 2022 she cared for patients unsupervised at Kingston General Hospital. Hospital officials estimated she treated about 200 patients; she earned $46,717.02 including benefits. Asked for her registration number on 25 January 2023, she was dismissed days later for providing what the hospital called extensive forged documentation. The Crown described her as essentially committing fraud for 672 days.
CTV News Ottawa reported on 4 May 2023 that a 22-year-old woman had been charged with fraud over $5,000, false pretence and three counts of uttering a forged document after police found she was not registered with the College. According to CBC, Stenhouse, by then 24, pleaded guilty to defrauding Kingston Health Sciences Centre of more than $5,000 and to using a forged document. On 6 May 2025, at the Ontario Court of Justice in Kingston, Justice Alison Wheeler imposed two years less a day in the community, including 18 months of house arrest, 240 hours of community service with the Elizabeth Fry Society and a $40,000 payment to the University Hospitals for Kingston Foundation.
Every document came from the candidate, and the one that should have come from an independent source, the regulator's register entry, arrived as an image rather than a live lookup. A screenshot of a register is not a check of the register, and five months of unsupervised ward work followed from that missing step. The Brigitte Cleroux case, recorded elsewhere on this site, shows Canada has seen this before.
If a hospital can be fooled by a screenshot, so can a family shown a picture of a licence or an enrolment letter by an agent. Never accept an image as proof. Go to the regulator's own website, type in the name or registration number, and see what comes back. Confirm a programme with the college's registrar directly, pay the institution and not the intermediary, and keep your originals.
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This is a news-sourced case summary written by the TrustMBBS team, not a first-person account; see the sources above. They reflect one person's experience and are not a verdict on any institution. Report your own: Report a scam or tell your story.