Fake Florida Nurse Arrested After Giving Shots, Advice (And More) For Over A Year

In another bizarre case involving a Florida woman, a medical office manager’s investigation into some missing medicine and syringes has led down the path to a fraudulent woman who had been posing as a licensed nurse at the office for over a year.

Kristina Balen has reportedly been carrying on at the medical facility in Sarasota, Florida, as if she were a registered nurse, giving shots, interacting with patients, and administering other nurse-ly duties. But it ends up that Kristina Balen was a fake nurse, and not only doesn’t the interloper have any previous medical or nurse training, she doesn’t even have a college degree, reports the Huffington Post.

How the 30-year-old Kristina Balen was able to pull off her bogus nurse shtick for over a year while working with other nurses and professionals is a mystery, not to mention Balen carrying out her required nurse tasks.

But with the proverbial cat out of the bag, Balen’s fake nurse gag has left her facing felony charges, Genevieve Judge of the Sarasota Police Department calling Kristina Balen’s fake nurse act both “scary” and “bold,” according to WFLA 8.

The roof first began caving in on Kristina Balen’s fake nurse career on February 26, when the office manager at the Florida facility — the Sarasota Arthritis Center — began an investigation into what happened to the significant loss of medicines and syringes, worth a reported $1,800.

But while the office manager’s investigation didn’t right away lead to a culprit in the medicine and syringe theft, it did send her stumbling into the fact that the only kind of nurse Kristina Balen should be is one for Halloween.

Along with being “scary” and “bold,” Genevieve Judge also pointed out the inherent danger and seriousness of Kristina Balen’s fake nurse crime.

“This is an extremely severe crime because this woman was not only saying she was a nurse when she wasn’t but she was lying to patients, she was giving medical advice and administering medication that she knew nothing about. She hadn’t gone through the practice of going to school or actually going through the steps to become a registered nurse… Her goal was she wanted to be a registered nurse, and when she found out people would believe (she was), she just went with it.”

In the end, Balen came clean about being a fake nurse, telling police that indeed she had lied, and was taken into custody on March 6. Balen’s fake nurse ruse comes with two felony charges.

Whether or not the fake nurse has any involvement with the missing medical loot remains unknown, but WFLA 8 had one last irony to report: Kristina Balen listed on her LinkedIn page that she’s a member of a medical ethics group.

[Image via Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office]