By Tom Jackman

The Medical Learning Center billed itself as a lower-cost nursing school with classes on nights and weekends, convenient for a student body made up largely of immigrants, many already working as medical assistants who wanted to become nurses. But there was a problem: The boards regulating nursing schools have for 12 years been ordering the school and its owner, Gullalai A. Safi, to shut down her practical nursing program.

That wasn’t a problem for Safi, 70, who has admitted she repeatedly defied the state’s orders and continued enrolling students at the small school in an office park in Merrifield, Virginia. But when students would graduate from the practical nursing program, they couldn’t take the nursing certification exam because the degree they held wasn’t from an accredited program.

After a group of students unsuccessfully tried to get Virginia authorities to act, or help them get refunds, 19 students sued Safi. A Fairfax County jury awarded them nearly $1.6 million last month, and the judge in the case entered a temporary injunction ordering the program to close.

Safi was ordered to return to court Thursday to explain what she had done to abide by the state’s and the judge’s orders. She didn’t show up. Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Michael F. Devine entered a warrant for her arrest.

Others have tried to stop Safi. She testified at the trial that she still had 65 students enrolled, and her attorney said Thursday that he didn’t know what, if anything, Safi had done to abide by the orders.

In the practical program, students said they weren’t getting enough hours doing clinical training with patients, were spending much of their time on simulations and were practicing injections on sponges. Graduating usually required retaking tests and mandatory test preparation classes for an additional fee. It was only when a potential applicant found an order from the Virginia Board of Nursing requiring the program to be closed, and notified friends who were in the program, that the students finally took action, realizing they had sent thousands of dollars down the drain.

Before going to court, the women tried to get a refund of the thousands they paid in tuition. They tried to get their transcripts, and they tried to get the authorities involved. Nothing worked.

“My dreams were stolen,” nursing student Atsede Teshager testified. “I’ve had to change my life completely and start again. I have nothing to show for my effort.”

Safi testified during the week-long trial that she didn’t care what the state boards said. Outraged, the judge ordered her to stop operating the practical nursing program at the Medical Learning Center, where the front door misspells the word as “Leanring” in large type.

In a 76-page verdict form with dozens of options, the jury did not find for Safi on a single one. They awarded the 19 students not only the amount of money each had paid Safi, but also doubled or tripled nearly every amount after finding repeated willful violations of the state’s closure orders under the Virginia Consumer Protection Act.

And then the jury awarded punitive damages to each student, ranging from $50,000 to $85,000 each, in addition to compensatory damages of $18,000 to $40,000 each.

“I am a single mom working two jobs,” student Adama Kamara testified. “I wanted to be an LPN so I could only work one job and spend more time with my daughter. I lost it all.”

Safi said in an email that the Medical Learning Center “has been victimized by the two government agencies,” the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia and the Virginia Board of Nursing, “due to vendetta, retaliation, and discrimination against MLC.”

Safi also supplied an email she sent to current students after the unanimous verdict against her, saying that she had been seeking help from the Virginia governor and attorney general to launch an inquiry and “take action against the corrupt officials in both government institutions. Unfortunately, no inquiry was performed, and no steps were taken to uncover the facts.”

She did not offer any evidence for her claims.

‘She ignored them’

Starting as early as 2013, state regulators told Safi she could not operate a practical nursing program at her Medical Learning Center, then in Arlington, because of the low passage rate of her graduates on the national nursing exam and 17 other violations. By 2016, Safi had relaunched her practical nursing program, and within two years Virginia’s nursing and education boards were investigating her again for failing to provide proper training. In 2019, the nursing board ordered her to stop operating the program.

But the school, now in Merrifield, kept accepting students. In 2022, the State Council of Higher Education revoked the Medical Learning Center’s accreditation for practical nurse training. In 2023, the nursing board, hearing that the students weren’t getting training on human patients, again entered an order requiring Safi to close the practical nursing program.

Safi testified about those findings at the trial last month, saying she disagreed with the orders from the nursing and higher education boards. And so “she ignored them,” her attorney, Dylan M. Phillips, said in his closing argument, according to trial transcripts. “She’s determined that no matter what, she’s going to get her students licensed, even if she upsets everyone in the government. She doesn’t care about bureaucracy. That doesn’t make it fraud.”

Officials with the nursing board claimed they lack the authority to enforce their own closure order. The higher education board similarly said Virginia law doesn’t give it that power. A spokeswoman for the nursing board said forcing the school to close fell to local prosecutors, but she declined to say whether the board had alerted them. Fairfax prosecutors said they had never received a referral and believed the attorney general would have been responsible.

Phillips repeatedly likened the lawsuit to the prosecution of Sean “Diddy” Combs, saying the fraud allegations were the wrong type of charges, similar to how jurors decided the most serious charges against the rapper in his sex-trafficking trial were inappropriate.

Many of the students were in the courtroom for the verdict and were thrilled with it, though they aren’t sure how much money they’ll see. Most have enrolled in new nursing programs.

When the verdict was announced, “it was beautiful. Very emotional,” said Elizabeth Resendiz Rosas of Leesburg, one of the lead plaintiffs. “I wish she [Safi] was there. She wasn’t.”

Most of the 19 students were already working in the medical field as assistants, and they wanted to become nurses. Resendiz Rosas and a friend, Brenda Burke-Ceron, had spent countless hours and more than $8,000 at the school when a friend interested in enrolling did some research in late 2023. She found the nursing board order instructing Safi to close the practical nursing program.

“She called me,” Resendiz Rosas said. “‘Do you know this about your school?’ We were shocked. Right away we called the Board of Nursing.” They were told in January 2024 that the program was supposed to be closed. They said Safi refused to cooperate, provide transcripts or any refunds. In one email entered into evidence, Safi wrote, “If you think you will get the money back you are highly mistaken.”

‘That’s not education’

The students said that some of the classes were online and that when they were taken to a nursing home to get hands-on practice, they were used mainly as laborers for the full-time staff there. Some of the students spent nearly $14,000 at the center in tuition and fees, said their attorney, Matthew G. Rosendahl.

When the students took exams, they were told only whether they passed or failed, Resendiz Rosas and Burke-Ceron said, and not given their tests back to review. When it came time to take the National Council Licensure Examination, needed for nursing certification, Safi would require students to pay $350 for a review class and $150 for the materials, the students said.

“She taught the test to them through a third party,” Rosendahl said. “That’s not education.”

And the students had no idea of Safi’s lengthy record with the nursing and higher education boards. After losing approval from the nursing board in 2013, and never having it from the higher education board, Safi obtained certification from both in 2016.

But students were complaining again in 2018 about doing more than half their clinical work through simulations rather than with actual patients, not being provided sufficient clinical hours in pediatrics and having an unlicensed nurse as an instructor, state records show. Appeals and the coronavirus pandemic delayed the case until 2023, when the nursing board ordered that the program “be closed no later than December 31, 2023.” The board ordered that Safi “halt admission of new students immediately” and “provide a copy of this order to all current and prospective students.”

Instead, Rosendahl said, Safi kept enrolling students, including eight of the plaintiffs, and her website continued to feature the logo of the nursing board. Safi declined an interview.

The students said they filed complaints with the regulatory agencies and with the police, tried to hire a lawyer, and, finally, with the help of Legal Aid, landed with attorneys Rosendahl and Kristi Kelly, who filed suit in March 2024. The trial began July 7 and lasted five days.

“I’m proud and happy and grateful,” Resendiz Rosas said, “that this is going to come to a good end. She’s going to be stopped taking advantage of people, and we’re going to be nurses.”

Three days after the verdict, Devine issued the temporary injunction against the Medical Learning Center, ordering it to immediately stop the practical nursing program. Two other programs offered by the center — nurse aide and medication aide curriculums — are not affected by the case and may still operate, state authorities said.

The judge noted that “at trial and while under oath, the Defendants expressed their intent to continue to operate the Practical Nurse program despite the clear orders of the Virginia Board of Nursing to cease operation of that program” and that “the public interest strongly favors issuance of an injunction to prevent existing and potential students of the Defendants’ Practical Nurse program from being harmed by the Defendants’ continued unlawful conduct.”

Later that day, the Fairfax sheriff’s office placed traffic cones and yellow tape around the parking lot outside the center.