Fake Colleges Attract Attention From Federal Investigators

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — From her hometown in India in 2010, Bhanu Challa pronounced she had no reason to doubt that Tri-Valley University was a legitimate American propagandize where she could pursue a master’s degree. Its website featured smiling students in caps and gowns and betrothed a shaggy campus in a San Francisco Bay Area suburb.

Months later, her hands were in cuffs as sovereign investigators questioned her motives for being in a U.S. Authorities told her that Tri-Valley was a sham school. It was offering papers that authorised foreigners to obtain U.S. tyro visas, and in some cases work in a country, while providing roughly no instruction, according to sovereign investigators.

“I was blank, totally vacant …,” she said, recalling her shock. “I didn’t know what to do, who we could approach.”

Tri-Valley is among during slightest half a dozen schools close down or raided by sovereign authorities in new years over allegations of immigration fraud. Like Tri-Valley, they had performed accede from U.S. immigration officials to acknowledge unfamiliar students.

But many offering small or no instruction or didn’t need all students to attend classes, instead exploiting a tyro visa complement for profit, investigators said.

“If there’s a approach to make a buck, some people will do it,” pronounced Brian Smeltzer, arch of a Counterterrorism and Criminal Exploitation Unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations.

Last year alone, Smeltzer said, his bureau flagged about 150 of a roughly 9,000 schools approved to accept unfamiliar students for review as intensity visa mills.

Meltzer pronounced many of a schools a group investigates are in California, that has a top series of unfamiliar students and schools approved to accept them. New York has a second most.

Government watchdogs contend a new visa rascal cases have unprotected gaps in ICE’s slip of schools that acknowledge unfamiliar students – a problem a group says is being corrected. And experts contend a scams harm a repute of a U.S. aloft preparation system, that now enrolls about 900,000 unfamiliar students.

“If anybody has any illusions there was one only bad apple, that’s not a case,” pronounced Barmak Nassirian, executive of sovereign process research with a American Association of State Colleges and Universities. “There are copiousness of them out there.”

At California Union University in Fullerton, owners Samuel Chai Cho Oh staged artificial graduation ceremonies as partial of a visa scheme, according to immigration officials. He pleaded guilty to visa rascal and income laundering and was condemned to a year in jail in 2011.

At College Prep Academy in Duluth, Georgia, boss Dong Seok Yi conspired to enroll some women with a bargain they would not attend classes, though work during bars, prosecutors alleged. He was convicted of immigration request rascal and condemned final year to 21 months in prison.

Investigators contend Tri-Valley, with some-more than 1,000 students, many Indian nationals, was among a largest propagandize rascal scams they have encountered. The school’s owner and president, Susan Xiao-Ping Su, used some-more than $5.6 million she done in a rascal to buy blurb genuine estate, a Mercedes Benz and mixed homes, sovereign prosecutors said.

She was condemned in Oct to 16 years in jail after a self-assurance on visa rascal and other charges. The propagandize is now closed.

The Tri-Valley box also sparked protests in India, where officials objected to U.S. authorities fixation ankle monitors on former students. Investigators contend they trust some students were cheated out of an education, though others were happy to be in a U.S. either they schooled most or not.

Jerry Wang, CEO of another San Francisco Bay Area school, Herguan University in Sunnyvale, is also confronting visa rascal charges. Prosecutors contend he supposing sovereign officials with fake practice information about students, transcripts and a minute purporting to uncover another propagandize supposed Herguan’s credits. He has pleaded not guilty, and a propagandize stays open.

His attorney, James Brosnahan, pronounced a allegations opposite his customer are totally untrue. “It is a really genuine university,” he said, observant that it recently was accredited by a Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools.

The classification reliable that a propagandize was accredited.

To be approved by immigration officials to accept unfamiliar students, schools contingency be accredited by a Department of Education-approved classification or have their courses supposed by during slightest 3 accredited schools.

A 2012 Government Accountability Office news pronounced ICE was not always verifying letters purporting to uncover a school’s courses were supposed elsewhere. It also pronounced ICE was unwell to investigate schools for patterns indicating to fraud. The group now verifies each propagandize credit minute and has grown a apparatus to consider a earnest of any propagandize violations.

“We’ve put in a larger complement of checks and balances,” pronounced Carissa Cutrell, a mouthpiece for Homeland Security Investigations’ Student and Exchange Visitor Program.

At Tri-Valley, Challa pronounced she paid scarcely $3,000 for her initial semester, though never perceived an assignment or an exam. She was unfortunate that she wasn’t training and was holding stairs to send when a propagandize was raided in 2011. She after finished her MBA and is now operative in a U.S.

“I had to pursue my studies here, we had to get a job,” she said. “I was a initial chairman in my family to come to a U.S.”

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