A hospital has accused Lori Niell, a nurse who proclaims herself a psychic, of publicly accessing patient records. The hospital claims that Niell accessed these records illegally over a year ago. She has not yet been arrested or charged for these crimes. Niell says she’s innocent, but nobody believes her because she can’t defend herself in a courtroom.
She says she’s been unable to find employment in nursing due to the accusations. She claims her psychic business is also being affected. After reading what the media says about her, potential clients believe she’s a fraud. “I’m out of money, and my reputation has been trashed… I’m at the end of my rope. I want to be charged or not charged so I can move on with my life,” she says.
The hospital and city officials advised the media about Neill’s access to more than 2,500 patient records from Memorial Hospital illegally via the Physician Link database. Niell has worked for the city hospitals for eight years. Her accusers state that she did not have work-related or medical reasons for accessing these patient records. Niell quit her job during the investigation after being told they would terminate her if she didn’t leave voluntarily.
As part of the investigative process, police showed up at her house with guns drawn and a search warrant. She says the items they confiscated from her home were a computer, personal journals, and some paperwork. At the time of this investigation, officials made it clear that they did not believe Niell accessed the patient records in the interest of committing identity fraud. They are accusing her of doing it for “personal reasons” instead.
Police Accuse Niell Of Using Private Information For Psychic Business
According to Niell, officials believe she was using the information from the personal records for her psychic business. They think she used them to learn about patients and then used that information to convince them she was psychic. She denies that this is the reason. She believes these investigations are because her intuitive abilities made her employers and co-workers uncomfortable.
The unease about her gifts made them want to target her. She denies charges of accessing these personal records on a wide scale. However, she did admit to accessing a few for non-work-related reasons. These records included phone numbers or addresses of family members or friends. Detectives told Niell they passed her case for review to the 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office.
Despite making several calls to this office, she never received information regarding the status of the case. After a reporter inquired on Tuesday, an office spokeswoman informed them that the DA’s office never received the case.
Colorado Springs Police Holding Onto The Case
The case appears to still lie in the hands of Colorado Springs police. They claim it’s still an active investigation, but the department’s computer forensic investigators are investigating a backlog of cases. Niell’s case is one of them. Lieutenant Mark Comte emailed The Gazette that the department only has two investigators in the computer forensic department.
He said their priority is to investigate crimes against children on the Internet. “Since the case in question does not involve a threat or danger to a child or others, it was not placed high on the priority list for examination,” says Lt. Comte. He also stated that they served nine warrants just this week to seize computers involved in child pornography cases.
“As one can thus determine, the two forensic examiners are quite busy.” Niell argues that although officials did not waste any time to accuse her of the crime, they are now in no rush to prove the accusations. She sees it more simply. She believes there have been no charges because no one has found proof that she’s done anything wrong. Niell is now looking for a lawyer. “It doesn’t take a psychic to figure out what’s happened here,” she said.
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