The Non-Financial Ledger

Picture February 2022. You are done with whatever you were doing before. Maybe a retail job, maybe an office, maybe something that was slowly hollowing you out. You see an ad — probably on Instagram — promising that in two weeks or less, you could become a certified cosmetic laser technician. The school behind the ad calls itself the Harvard of the industry. It has a CEO who films himself for social media and goes by “Louis the Laser Guy.” It offers financing so the $7,000 to $10,000 tuition doesn’t have to hit all at once. There are 500 job leads going out every month to graduates. There is a sister company that will teach you how to open your own business. This is a real path. This is attainable.

Colleen Cummane saw that ad. So did Gabrielle Van Eck. Both were seeking a career change. Neither had an esthetician license. Neither had experience with commercial lasers. That is exactly the profile NLI was hunting for — not despite the inexperience, but because of it. Inexperienced people do not know to ask whether the state of Illinois recognizes the certificate being sold to them. They do not know to ask whether the school issuing it has ever been approved by the Illinois Board of Higher Education. They do not know to ask whether the industry they are being promised entry into actually requires a state esthetics license as the baseline credential — a credential NLI never mentioned, never recommended they get, and actively worked around in its sales pitch.

Both women borrowed money. Cummane took on $7,545 in debt. Van Eck took on $8,545, after receiving a $1,000 “scholarship” she was never told how would be applied. They sat through ten days of coursework — some of it virtual, some in-person — in what the lawsuit describes as non-medical, non-sterile environments. During the courses, students were pressured to receive cosmetic treatments themselves, sometimes multiple procedures in a single week. The physician oversight that should have been present for those treatments often was not. Safety assessments were sometimes handled by out-of-state medical professionals over the phone.

The courses ended with a party. Alcohol was served. Printed certificates were handed out. The marketing machine called it “fun.” NLI called itself the number one most highly respected brand.

Then both women went out into the world with their certificates and tried to find work. The med spas they applied to were not impressed. Those businesses wanted estheticians — licensed estheticians, with real state credentials — who had meaningful laser experience. The NLI certificate represented neither of those things. The “500 job leads per month” materialized as email blasts for one or two months, then went silent. Neither Cummane nor Van Eck ever found employment as a laser technician.

What they were left with was the debt. Interest accumulating. Fees adding up. A certificate that Illinois law says was never legally issued. A credential the IDFPR’s own regulatory guidance says would be deceptive for a business to let an employee claim. A career that never started. And the dawning understanding that the people who sold them this dream knew it was not real — and chose to keep selling it anyway.

That is not a financial loss. That is a year of your life oriented around a lie. That is applying for jobs with confidence, then getting rejection after rejection, and slowly realizing the problem is not you. That is the specific, grinding humiliation of having made a significant adult decision — borrowing thousands of dollars, betting on yourself — on the basis of information that was deliberately falsified by a person who made money off your trust.

The lawsuit estimates the class numbers in the hundreds. Each one of those people has a version of this story. They are still paying off the loans.

Legal Receipts: What the Complaint Actually Says

Every quote below is drawn verbatim from the class action complaint filed January 2, 2025 (Case No. 1:25-cv-00036, N.D. Ill.), or from the regulatory sources cited within it. Nothing is paraphrased.

“NLI’s marketing and coursework purposely and intentionally fails to disclose that the industry standard in Illinois is that those performing cosmetic treatments utilizing powerful lasers have an esthetician license.” — Class Action Complaint, ¶8

• This is not an oversight. The complaint uses the words “purposely and intentionally.” NLI knew the esthetician license requirement existed and structured its marketing to make sure students never heard about it.
• The word “industry standard” is doing specific legal work here: it means even if a law did not explicitly require a license, the practical job market in Illinois demanded one. NLI was selling people a credential the employers it promised them access to did not recognize.

“NLI does not now have, and at all relevant times has never had, a permit of approval from the [Illinois] Board.” — Class Action Complaint, ¶72

• “At all relevant times” covers at minimum a decade of operation in Illinois. NLI ran courses, collected tuition, and issued certificates in the state for over ten years without the single authorization Illinois law required.
• The Act does not permit a grace period or good-faith exception. The prohibition on advertising, enrolling students, and issuing certificates was absolute from day one of NLI’s Illinois presence.

“Why should I choose your school and not your competitors? Easy, we are the first school, longest running school, largest school and only school currently approved by both the ARRA and Post Secondary Regulatory Boards and Sallie Mae.” — NLI Marketing Copy (January 2022 archive capture), cited in Complaint ¶90

• NLI named irrelevant approval bodies — ARRA and Sallie Mae are financing-related, not Illinois vocational school regulators — to create a false impression of comprehensive compliance while burying the one approval that actually mattered: Board authorization from the Illinois Board of Higher Education, which NLI never had.
• This constitutes what the complaint terms intentional misdirection: citing approvals that do not speak to NLI’s legal authority to operate in Illinois, while concealing that the authority to operate was specifically missing.

• This is the most operationally damning statement in the complaint. It confirms that Silberman personally trained his sales staff to withhold the single most important fact a prospective student needed to know: that in Illinois, you need an esthetician license before any of NLI’s training has practical value in the job market.
• The framing “black and white statements” is a business euphemism for accurate disclosures. The instruction was not to soften the message — it was to make sure the message was never delivered at all.

“NLI also directs its staff and representatives recruiting on its behalf to refrain from mentioning that Illinois med spas and other businesses typically seek to hire estheticians with laser experience or certifications.” — Class Action Complaint, ¶92

• This is an organizational policy, not one person’s bad behavior. NLI institutionalized the concealment of the esthetician license requirement at the recruitment level — the exact moment when a prospective student could still walk away.
• Every student enrolled after this policy was in place was denied the information that would have most directly affected their decision to spend thousands of dollars.

“The Department deems the use of the term ‘medical esthetician’ by a licensed esthetician to be a violation of the Barber, Cosmetology, Esthetics, Hair Braiding, and Nail Technology Act… consumers may be misled to believe that a ‘medical esthetician’ has some type of medical training that has been sanctioned by the [IDFPR].” — IDFPR Statement on “Medical Estheticians,” cited in Complaint ¶¶62–64

• This regulatory statement predates the lawsuit. The IDFPR had already put on record that the exact type of credential NLI was selling — a “medical aesthetics” certification — is inherently deceptive under Illinois law.
• NLI’s entire business model in Illinois was built on a credential the state’s own professional regulation department described as misleading to consumers. NLI continued operating anyway.

“NLI’s courses would ultimately end with a party, wherein students who successfully completed their coursework were issued printed certificates and given alcohol to further sell NLI’s marketing medical aesthetics and its classes as ‘fun.'” — Class Action Complaint, ¶48

• The graduation ceremony itself was a sales tool. Students were given alcohol as part of a deliberate effort to associate the NLI experience with celebration and excitement — reinforcing the brand at the exact moment students received a certificate that Illinois law says was never legal to issue.
• Silberman personally supervised these events, according to the complaint (¶49).

“NLI’s internships are a sham program to falsely inflate job placement data.” — Class Action Complaint, ¶116

• The complaint states that NLI’s paid “Junior Laser Tech” internship program was created primarily to manufacture a higher post-graduation hire rate statistic, which was then used in marketing to recruit additional students.
• This is a self-reinforcing fraud loop: the unqualified certificates produce unemployed graduates, who are then funneled into internships, which inflate employment data, which attracts more students, who pay more tuition, and the cycle repeats.

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Health

NLI’s operation created compounding public safety risks at every stage of the process. The people receiving services and the people providing them were both exposed to harm.

• Students were pressured to receive cosmetic treatments on themselves during coursework — sometimes multiple procedures in a single week — in non-medical, non-sterile environments. These are laser treatments, not facials. The complaint explicitly notes the environments lacked appropriate medical controls.
• Physician oversight during courses was required but “rarely” present. Patient safety reviews and assessments were sometimes handled by out-of-state medical professionals over the phone — a practice that bypassed the in-person supervision requirements that exist precisely because laser treatments carry physical risk.
• NLI graduates entered the job market believing their certificate qualified them to perform laser procedures. Many sought employment. Some may have found it in other states or in settings with less rigorous hiring practices. The complaint does not quantify downstream patient harm, but a workforce trained without adequate oversight and credentialing supervision represents a systemic patient safety gap.
• Under Illinois law, laser treatments are categorized as the practice of medicine and require physician delegation for each treatment. NLI’s marketing explicitly promised graduates independence from that requirement — “own your own business” — which, if acted upon, would constitute unlicensed medical practice.

Economic Inequality

NLI’s targeting strategy deliberately selected the most financially vulnerable prospects — people seeking upward mobility — and extracted thousands of dollars from them through a system designed to ensure they could not easily refuse.

• NLI’s primary target demographic was career changers with “little to no experience” in the industry. These are people who lacked existing professional networks or credentials to verify NLI’s claims, making them the ideal marks for a sophisticated sales operation.
• The complaint specifies that NLI specifically and repeatedly targeted young women via Instagram and other social media platforms. Silberman personally recruited students he encountered online, leveraging his “Louis the Laser Guy” brand persona as a trust signal.
• NLI offered financing through lenders who marketed directly on NLI’s own website. The nature of this lender relationship was not disclosed to students. Both named plaintiffs took out loans and continue accruing interest on debt for a credential that was worthless and illegally issued from the start.
• The “scholarship” system — which the complaint describes as arbitrary discounts issued at Silberman’s direction — made the advertised price illusory. Students who could not afford the listed tuition were offered individualized discounts calibrated to whatever they would agree to pay, ensuring NLI extracted revenue from even the most financially constrained prospects.
• Louology, NLI’s sister company, was positioned as a free resource for graduates — but its actual function, per the complaint, was to monetize unemployed graduates further through premium memberships, software sales, and partner referrals. The most desperate graduates, burdened with debt and no job prospects, were also the most likely to pay for Louology’s follow-on services.
• The class is estimated in the hundreds of people, with an amount in controversy exceeding $5 million. That $5 million was extracted from people who were looking for a better life and handed a loan application instead of the truth.

The Cost of a Dream

These numbers are not abstract. They represent the financial arithmetic of what NLI extracted from people who were trying to build something.

What Now?

The class action is active. If you or someone you know paid for NLI laser courses in Illinois, the time to act is now — the class period covers all persons who enrolled in an NLI laser course in Illinois within the applicable statute of limitations.

The People to Hold Accountable

• Louis Silberman — CEO, founder, and named individual defendant. He personally recruited students, personally directed the scripting of sales calls, personally supervised graduation parties, and personally controlled both NLI and Louology. He is not an institutional abstraction. He is a named defendant in a federal lawsuit.
• National Laser Institute, LLC — The corporate defendant. Still operating. Still advertising. Check whether their status with the Illinois Board of Higher Education has changed before engaging with them in any state.
• On Demand Health and Beauty Marketing, LLC (Louology) — Named co-defendant. Functions as the monetization layer for NLI’s graduate funnel. If you are a Louology member, your membership was built into NLI’s revenue model from the start.

Watchlist: Where to File Complaints

• Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) — The specific regulatory body NLI was required to register with and never did. Complaints about unapproved private vocational schools in Illinois go here. Their jurisdiction is directly implicated in this case.
• Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR) — Regulates esthetics licensing and has already issued a statement calling “medical esthetician” credentials deceptive. Complaint filings about unlicensed practice and deceptive credential marketing.
• Illinois Attorney General — Consumer Protection Division — The Illinois Consumer Fraud Act (815 ILCS 505) is one of the causes of action in this lawsuit. The AG’s office has authority to investigate and bring enforcement actions under the same statute.
• Federal Trade Commission (FTC) — The FTC has jurisdiction over deceptive for-profit education marketing at the federal level, with particular enforcement focus on job placement misrepresentations by vocational schools.
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) — NLI connected students to financing partners directly through its website. The nature of that lender relationship was not disclosed to students. This is a CFPB-relevant fact pattern involving undisclosed financial relationships and predatory education lending.

Mutual Aid and Grassroots Action

• If you paid NLI for a laser course in Illinois and have not been contacted about the class action, reach out to Luisi Holz Law (161 N. Clark, Suite 1600, Chicago, IL 60601; LuisiL@luisiholzlaw.com; HolzJ@luisiholzlaw.com). You may be a class member with recoverable damages including tuition, interest, and fees.
• Document everything. Loan agreements, financing disclosures, marketing materials you were shown, emails from NLI recruiters, job placement emails that stopped, and any communications from Louology. These are evidence and they belong to you.
• If you are currently enrolled in a for-profit vocational school anywhere — not just NLI — look up whether that school has the required approval from your state’s higher education regulatory board before making any payment. The Illinois Board of Higher Education publishes its approved school list. Your state has an equivalent.
• Share this reporting with anyone who has seen NLI advertising, particularly on Instagram and other social media where Silberman actively recruits. The scheme depends on information asymmetry. Closing that gap is direct action.
• Connect with consumer advocacy organizations in Illinois — including Illinois PIRG and local legal aid clinics — who can help class members navigate debt disputes, loan deferment, and complaint processes if legal representation is inaccessible.