Inspection reports reveal further details on allegedly fraudulent LTC worker

Questions are swirling as to how a 29-year-old Mississauga woman allegedly forged documents and worked as a nurse without any true credentials after police announced her arrest on Friday.

Officers launched an investigation in May 2023 when they discovered a nurse employed at a long-term care home had falsified her documents in order to be hired.

Police’s financial crimes unit says the woman forged legitimate nurse documents by changing the name on the documents to her own.

Oladoyin (Deborah) Farominiyi, 29, claimed to be a nurse at three long-term care facilities.

This includes the Heritage Green nursing home on the Stoney Creek mountain and the Arbour Creek Care Centre on King Street East.

In May of last year, Hamilton police started an investigation upon discovering that a nurse employed at a long-term care facility had misrepresented herself as a qualified nurse to secure employment.

READ MORE: Hamilton police charge LTC worker for allegedly forging nurse qualifications

Between October 2022 and May 2023, the accused held positions at three long-term care facilities.

Farominiyi has been charged with four counts of using forged documents, false pretence over $5,000, and fraud over $5,000.

The case’s lead detective said there is no evidence Farominiyi hurt anyone while she pretended to be a qualified nurse.

There has been no evidence any of the patients she cared for were hurt as a result, but police say at least one of the homes have made allegations about that to the province.

An inspection report from the Ministry of Long-Term Care conducted at Arbour Creek last year showed that the accused was not registered with the College of Nurses of Ontario and had been listed on the college’s website as an unregistered practitioner.

An additional report from the ministry conducted at Heritage Green shows that, “residents were placed at risk of harm when they received prescribed medications from the staff member who did not have certifiable knowledge, skills and experience to administer medications.”

READ MORE: Ontario expands program to train long-term care staff

Researcher and advocate Vivian Stamatopoulos calls this a failure at multiple levels.

“All the known cases of forged documents that I have discovered involved private staffing agencies, which underscores the need to curtail if not ban the use of staffing agencies altogether in long-term care,” said Stamatopoulos.

“We need to have a standardized process to have every single operators hire and vet their workers and that should go through the Ministry of Long-Term Care.”

The Executive Director at Arbour Creek Care Centre tells CHCH that the individual in question came to work at the centre through an external agency where she had used forged documents and had assumed the valid registration number of a certified nurse.

The Director says that once it was discovered that the individual was not in fact a nurse, she was immediately reported to the police, College of Nurses of Ontario and a report was filed with the Ministry of Long-Term Care.

She says there were no adverse resident care incidents at the facility and Arbour Creek has terminated its professional relationship with the agency in question.

In a response to the incident, the ministry says it immediately notified the police when they became aware of the situation and that the government has recently doubled the number of long-term care inspectors.