Cops bust caretakers for bogus credentials

People would arrive in scrubs to get certificates to land jobs at assisted living facilities, group homes and even as private school bus drivers.

But all along, the 56-year-old woman was running a diploma mill — with no training — taking wads of cash over the fence and giving her customers fake certificate, prosecutors say.

Fernandez was among 20 people arrested Wednesday in an undercover investigation into one of Miami-Dade’s burgeoning illegal industries: cash for credentials.

At least one assisted living facility was shut down after Miami-Dade police found the owner bought a host of the bogus credentials to care for people with special needs — but was never certified herself.

“This is being done for one reason: greed,” said Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle at a press conference that capped an investigation that began in February and ended this week. “At the heart of this are our most vulnerable people: the elderly and children.”

Called Operation Cardiac Arrest, the probe represents the first crackdown on what senior advocates have long identified as a growing problem in Miami-Dade that leaves elders and mentally ill in the care of shoddy and untrained caretakers.

Rundle said the investigation began in February after an anonymous tipster complained people were able to buy CPR cards from a company known as A&F Health Review to get jobs as bus drivers for children.

The cards even came with the American Red Cross symbol — showing the person was trained in all the basics of life-saving techniques.

Police said they were able to break into the network weeks later when they sent an undercover officer to meet with Fernandez at her apartment in a yellow, two-story building at 1020 SW Seventh St. — just blocks from the state attorney’s office.

During the meeting, Fernandez assured the officer that she could get him fully qualified to work with Down’s Syndrome children — and then provided him with a host of certificates at a cost of $200. “She was really the mastermind of this ring,” said Rundle.

Over the next six months, Miami-Dade police kept watch over the apartment as people arrived at all hours — sometimes clad in scrubs — buying certificates at the gate.

At one point, another undercover officer who visited Fernandez’s apartment was met by an assistant who sold two CPR certificates for $40.

Undercover officers visited the apartment again and were met by a second assistant who gave them CPR credentials for $20.

During the probe, police found that Fernandez claimed to have gone to a school that allowed her to give training, but then found out even those credentials were bogus.

The investigation expanded in July when officers followed a woman home after she and a companion left the apartment clutching certificates.

Investigators later learned the woman, Yuliet Fuentes, owner of Yuli’s Home Care ALF, had just bought certificates for a worker who had been cited by the state for not being trained in CPR and other services. Without the credentials, the caretaker would not be able to stay on staff.

By the time police reviewed the state’s records, they found that nearly a dozen certificates issued to the home in the past to care for people came from Fernandez.

The probe came to a close on Wednesday with the shuttering of the six-bed home after police found that no one, including Fuentes, was qualified to care for frail elders.

In addition, police rounded up more than a dozen of the other suspects: Seven people who bought credentials to get jobs as school bus drivers were charged with forgery and misrepresentation; nine who paid cash for certificates to work in group homes — including Fuentes — were charged with forgery, misrepresentation and organized scheme to defraud.

Fernandez and two of her assistants, Raylin Ruiz Levy, 44, and Estrella Quincose Viamonte, 48, were charged with racketeering, forging private labels and misrepresentation, while Fernandez faces an additional charge of operating as an unlicensed health care provider.

Though the police investigation is over, elder advocates say the problem of fake credentials for caretakers in Miami-Dade is far more pervasive.

“There is so much going on and it will continue,” said Brian Lee, a former director of the state Elder Affairs ombudsman program.

“This [investigation] should be ongoing,’’ he added, saying that giving untrained caretakers false credentials “puts people in danger."