Fake nurse provides care to more than 4,000 patients, Florida cops say

[Desmond Milligan 0]

A woman is accused of posing as a nurse and providing care to thousands of patients at a Florida hospital, deputies said.

Autumn Bardisa, 29, was arrested and charged Aug. 5 after a seven-month investigation revealed she had been working at AdventHealth Palm Coast without a valid nursing license, the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office said in an Aug. 6 statement. She was charged with seven counts each of practicing a health care profession without a license and fraudulent use of personal identification information.

AdventHealth said it could not comment when reached about the case in an Aug. 7 email to McClatchy News.

“This is one of the most disturbing cases of medical fraud we’ve ever investigated,” Sheriff Rick Staly said in the release.

After Bardisa was promoted in January, an employee found she had been working with an expired certified nursing assistant license since starting her job at AdventHealth in 2023, deputies said.

Between June 2024 and January 2025, Bardisa provided medical services to 4,486 patients, according to deputies.

The investigation discovered Bardisa had submitted false documentation and used the license number of a nurse at a different hospital who shared her first name, deputies said.

When asked about the different last name, she told administrators she’d recently gotten married, but she never provided a marriage license, deputies said.

Bardisa was terminated at the end of January after she couldn’t prove her identity, according to deputies.

“This woman potentially put thousands of lives at risk by pretending to be someone she was not,” Staly said.

She was taken to the Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility, and her bond was set at $70,000, deputies said.

Palm Coast is about an 80-mile drive northeast from Orlando.

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