An imposter nurse was arrested after treating over 4,000 patients at a Florida hospital without a medical license in a two-year scam that staffers only discovered when she was up for a promotion, according to authorities.
Autumn Bardisa, 29, was arrested Tuesday after allegedly treating 4,486 individuals since July 2023 at AdventHealth Palm Coast Parkway while lying about being a registered nurse, the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office said.
“This is one of the most disturbing cases of medical fraud we’ve ever investigated,” Sheriff Rick
Staly said in a statement.
“This woman potentially put thousands of lives at risk by pretending to be someone she was not,” Staly said.
Authorities began investigating Bardisa in January after hospital administrators fired her for allegedly impersonating a registered nurse.
The accused scrub-wearing con artist used a former classmate’s medical license number and false documentation to get a job as an advanced nurse technician, cops said.
When she applied for a position at AdventHealth in 2023, Bardisa indicated she had passed the required schooling to become a registered nurse, but had not yet passed a national exam to get her license, according to police.
Later, the sham nurse told her supervisors she had passed the exam and even provided a license number that matched her first name, “Autumn,” but had a different last name, authorities detailed.
She explained the suspicious discrepancy by stating she had recently gotten married and changed her last name, but never provided a marriage license when asked to do so, cops said.
When Bardisa received a promotion at the hospital in January, a fellow employee learned she only had an expired nursing assistant license — triggering a workplace investigation into Bardisa’s identity.
The hospital fired her on Jan. 22, 2025, after she still refused to hand over a marriage certificate matching the last name on her dud license.
Cops later discovered the nursing license matched the name of someone Bardisa attended school with, though the two didn’t know each other, police said.
Bardisa was arrested at her home and charged with seven counts of practicing a health care profession without a license and seven counts of fraudulent use of personal identification, records show.
She is currently being held on a $70,000 bond, officials said.
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