A for-profit nursing school must pay restitution and is permanently barred from holding classes in Massachusetts after operating without a license and misrepresenting its training programs to dozens of students.
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey says the actions are the result of an agreement settling a lawsuit that the state brought against Hosanna College of Health, Inc., based in Florida.
The settlement states that the school must pay $190,000 in restitution to eligible students who attended classes between 2013 and 2015. The school also is prohibited from collecting any outstanding tuition payments from students who took in-person classes in Massachusetts.
In February 2016, the state sued Hosanna, along with its founding executive, Jackson Augustin, and one of its former officers, Michelle Desarmes, for making misrepresentations to students from the Boston area’s Haitian community who were seeking to take nursing classes. The suit contended that the classes did not properly prepare students for their nursing examinations.
“Students in Massachusetts with dreams to become nurses were targeted by this school and misled into taking unlicensed and low-quality courses in order to generate a profit,” Healey says. “This settlement will bring critical funds back to students from the Haitian community who invested in this program but were never given the education they were promised.”
In July 2016, a judge entered an order that banned Hosanna from recruiting students for its nursing program and continuing with classes in Massachusetts.
Dozens of Hosanna’s former students who attended classes in Massachusetts are expected to be eligible for settlement payments.
Healey has taken a series of actions against predatory for-profit schools and made securing student loan relief a top priority.
