Robin Niceta extradited from New Mexico to face charges for faking brain cancer

AURORA | Robin Niceta, a former social worker accused of targeting an Aurora city lawmaker with a phony child abuse tip, has been extradited from New Mexico to Colorado to face charges for lying about having brain cancer to avoid prosecution, according to law enforcement.

The Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office wrote in a Twitter post Monday that Niceta was picked up from the Sandoval County Jail in Bernalillo, New Mexico on Aug. 4.

She posted a $10,000 cash-surety bond and was released from the Arapahoe County Detention Facility on Aug. 5. Niceta has been charged with attempting to influence a public servant, plus 9 other charges including forgery and tampering with evidence.

Niceta’s next court appearance is scheduled to take place Aug. 18.

A July 24 grand jury indictment describes how Niceta’s story of languishing with brain cancer unraveled under scrutiny as investigators tracked the online presence of New Mexico Oncology Associates, an apparently fictitious medical practice, back to Niceta and her mother.

Niceta faces a bevy of new charges, including multiple counts of forgery, attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy, tampering with physical evidence and criminal impersonation. Her mother, Janice Dudley, also faces charges of forgery, evidence tampering and conspiracy.

Lawyers representing Niceta withdrew from the case in May when claims about her health were initially called into question. Her current attorney, Frank Moya, said he would wait to comment on the specific allegations but criticized authorities’ decision to arrest Niceta in New Mexico instead of arranging with Moya for her surrender as “justice by ambush.”

Last year, Niceta was criminally charged after she allegedly called in a fake child abuse tip to the county child services agency where she worked. The target of the tip was Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky, who had criticized former police Chief Vanessa Wilson, on a talk radio show. Wilson and Niceta were had a romantic relationship at the time, which ended about the same time.

As legal proceedings against Niceta moved forward this year, Niceta tried to claim through her lawyers that she was suffering from glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, and was too sick to travel to Colorado from New Mexico, where her parents live. She also claims to have suffered long-term harm from an assault that she says took place in her home in 2021.

Niceta’s lawyers shared images with prosecutors that they said were scans of a tumor in Niceta’s brain, along with reports signed by “C. Marquez M.D.” of New Mexico Oncology and a letter purporting to be from California-based cancer treatment center City of Hope.

In March, Niceta’s lawyers asked that Niceta be evaluated to determine whether she was mentally competent to stand trial, filing the same medical records in the Arapahoe County District Court.

The reports, signed by Marquez, included the observation that Niceta was “disoriented, unable to communicate and suffering from cognitive impairment” during office visits, according to the indictment. Niceta’s medical records also included statements from her mother describing Niceta’s purported poor health.

Daniel Cohen — a chief deputy district attorney from Denver and the special prosecutor in Niceta’s original criminal case — called the phone number included in the medical records for New Mexico Oncology and spoke with a man who identified himself as Marquez and vouched for the legitimacy of the scans of Niceta’s brain.

But when Cohen tried to use public databases to identify a “C. Marquez” licensed to practice medicine in New Mexico, he came up empty-handed.

He showed Niceta’s medical records to Corral Steffey, a doctor at Denver Health Medical Center, who pointed out that the records “contained numerous typos and improperly used various medical terms.”

Steffey also raised concerns about the brain scan images being a forgery due to their similarity with other publicly-available images found online, adding that the tumor “did not appear to be medically legitimate, due to the unlikely size, shape, and area of effect of the claimed glioblastoma.”

As Cohen continued to scrutinize the records submitted by Niceta, he found more irregularities pertaining to Marquez and New Mexico Oncology.

The Facebook page for New Mexico Oncology had been created in January 2023, the same month Niceta submitted images of her brain scans to prosecutors, but showed no activity after January. The website for New Mexico Oncology was created the same month and did not include any information about employees or staff.

On May 18, a grand jury empowered Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Johnnie Turnidge to investigate the validity of Niceta’s claims about her illness.

Information subpoenaed from Facebook, GoDaddy and Google revealed that New Mexico Oncology’s online presence was associated with “Carey Marquez,” “Courtney Marquez” and “C Marquez,” as well as a particular IP address, a series of numbers used to uniquely identify computers connected to the Internet.

Finally, when Turnidge subpoenaed internet service provider Cable One for information about the associated IP address, he learned it was registered to Niceta and associated with her and her mother.

He was later able to link the phone number Cohen had called to a credit card registered to Niceta’s mother and used by Niceta. Law enforcement also determined that the physical address of New Mexico Oncology was invalid and that no one named Carey Marquez was licensed to practice oncology in the United States. Representatives from City of Hope told investigators that the organization had not corresponded with Niceta.

The indictment also describes inconsistencies in Niceta’s account of her illness and losing her ability to communicate. While Niceta’s medical records indicate she became nonverbal in January 2022, Turnidge said he personally spoke with Niceta in May 2022 and that she “had no difficulty at all communicating … during the course of a lengthy police interview.”

Turnidge said he also saw Niceta speak with a judge and enter and exit the courthouse without physical assistance during her appearance on May 15 of this year, despite the fact that Dudley said, among other things, that Niceta was physically incapacitated.

As Niceta tried to convince others of her illness, according to the indictment, her mother gave statements to news media about her daughter’s condition, telling the Sentinel in the spring that her daughter had “a huge tumor on the right side of her head,” which she described as glioblastoma.

Dudley also wrote in an April email that Niceta was “experiencing significant medical issues that have worsened since August 2021 after having experienced a brutal assault in her home and she is in need of specialized medical care.”

“This case has presented barriers to her getting this care and sadly, she is now at a point where she cannot accept any sort of plea or find resolution regardless of innocence to obtain this treatment,” Dudley wrote.

Jurinsky said on July 21 that she doubted Niceta’s claims of poor health as soon as they were made public and described feeling vindicated by the information in the indictment.

“They created a fake hospital, for starters. Then they created a fake phone number for the fake hospital, a fake doctor to answer the fake phone number for the fake hospital, a fake Facebook page for the fake doctor for the fake hospital… I don’t even know what to say,” Jurinsky said. “I’m just on pins and needles with this woman. I’m always like, what’s next? You know? What’s next?”