Instead, she ended up dead at 20 years old. Her body was found in a cheap motel a few miles from the $800-a-month halfway house her parents were footing the bill for, according to a lawsuit filed by her family.

Nicole died in Delray Beach, the “recovery capital of America.” The oceanfront vacation spot is home to thousands seeking sobriety — as well as scam artists who prey on addicts and their insurance plans.

When addicts want to get clean, the most common path, at least for those who can afford it, is a brief chemical detox followed by a 28-day inpatient rehab. In South Florida, rehab is often followed by a much longer stint living in a halfway house (typically a low-rent apartment) with other recovering addicts. People staying in those “sober living” homes are often encouraged to get additional support from outpatient programs that offer one-on-one counseling, group therapy, and 12-step programs.

Nicole Cronin was in high school when she first got into drugs. She started with pot, then, after she met the dealer boyfriend her parents refer to only as “The Scumbag,” she got into opiates — first painkillers, then heroin.

Her parents found out about their daughter’s habit when her mother, Myra Cronin, was called out of work to come pick up her kid at school. Nicole had seemed high, her mom recalls, so the school searched her purse, found drugs, and called the police. Because it was a few days before her 18th birthday, Nicole was dealt with as a juvenile.

Nicole’s family immediately put her into an outpatient program down the street from their New Jersey home. Eventually the program’s staff suggested she go to a 28-day facility for more intensive care. She started college twice, both times getting kicked out within weeks for using drugs.

Her relapses took her back and forth between inpatient treatments and intensive outpatient programs, until finally her clinicians recommended that Nicole go to Florida, far from her dealers and addict friends.

The day before Christmas in 2011, when she was 19, Nicole got on a plane bound for a South Florida rehab. She never came home.

Nicole stayed at Halfway There for four days. On the night she died, she spoke by phone to a friend she knew from an earlier stint in a different rehab, the friend told BuzzFeed News. (Because of the stigma of addiction, he agreed to talk only on condition of anonymity.) According to this friend, Nicole was looking forward to starting a new job at Panera Bread the next day.

But later that night, the staff of Halfway There found her high on opiates, according to the lawsuit filed last year by Nicole’s parents. Halfway There, like most sober homes, kicked out anyone who relapsed, according to a person who worked at Halfway There in 2013 and spoke to BuzzFeed News on condition of anonymity.

Myra said that she did not receive a phone call from the Halfway There staff that night or anytime after, and that the staff paid for the motel room and left her daughter there alone. (Halfway There declined to answer any questions from BuzzFeed News about what happened that night.)

“It was incredibly negligent not to take her to a hospital or call the police,” Myra told BuzzFeed News, an accusation also made in her family’s lawsuit. “That gross misjudgment led to her death.”