Learning that you have been the subject of any kind of fraud or a big financial aid scam can be devastating. Sadly, these kinds of things have become a wee bit common. So you have to be sure that when any kind of student loan or investment is concerned, you make an informed decision. You have to be vigilant not to fall into a trap like Vatterott College Lawsuit and Fraud allegations in the media. Students usually plan to see the outcome of their investment when they spend time, energy, and hard-earned funds for a college education. You want a decent training and equipment in college. If you don’t get them, you can benefit from something called Vatterott College class action lawsuit.
You would also want to have a degree and the expertise you need to follow your professional career path to get the right job opportunity. There have been talks about colleges like Vatterott; however. These colleges don’t give any kind of competencies to their students to use once they have graduated. The students who are engaged in the Vatterott College lawsuit have important accusations. They say that they had to invest significant time, energy, and substantial cash on a pointless diploma. You would never want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on what you thought to be an exceptional education. And to later find out that it cannot even get you a job good enough to pay back your student loan debts.
How to protect yourself from frauds
Instead of being the victim of these kinds of scams, you could watch out for some factors when you are in the process of registering at university. In the media recently, you have heard a lot of news about the crackdown on businesses providing schools student loan debt relief. These are the firms that often pretend to assist you in getting rid of student debt for a few hundred bucks for their obligations. There are a lot of alternatives available with the federal government for the repayment scheme of financial aid. To keep track of today’s illicit businesses out there, you need to make sure to check out those alternatives.
Before you undertake for refinancing, you must also ensure that you check out reputable portals and learn about lenders. If someone ever tells you that you are going to have to pay some amount to get the funds you need for refinancing or loans, look elsewhere. You should never have to give any money to get money, except for some lenders who pay nominal registration charges. The reality is that there are many programs out there that provide free assistance when it gets to credit, reimbursement assistance, debt consolidation, etc.
Vatterott College Lawsuit and Fraud allegations
A lawsuit has struck yet another for-profit college. Three former staff members plead guilty in Vatterott college lawsuit in reaction to a federal indictment lodged on 5 February 2009, on allegations that these people performed fraud against the state. The former school representatives confessed to their crime of faking federal financial aid documents and some accreditations and to committing fraud against the federal government. By pleading guilty they cared enough not to waste taxpayers’ money by making the Vatterott College class action lawsuit last longer. The people in the case received $344.000 of financial aid for students who did not meet the requirements.
What happened
Between August 2005 and July 2006, co-director of the university, K. E. Woods, D. O. Marbell, and D. Campbell, plotted to deceive both students and the state by enrolling students without a high school diploma and GED certificate. The group produced GED certificates and presented these documents as legitimate. Not having this certificate would have rendered students unfit for admission and also ineligible for student loan forgiveness. They also recommended students to sign up for GED programs and bring the application documents to the college. These documents were not GED approved and were added to the records of the students if anybody would want to inspect them.
Vatterott College Lawsuit
Students then were asked to choose the option in their college application that their GED certificate. It would be ready by the time the program would start. The three then registered the students and started collecting aid funds for which they were not eligible. Woods went even further by fudging and severely inflating registration figures to guarantee he was appointed as co-director. This position enabled him to supervise both Vetterott’s offices of financial aid and registration. It also allowed him to commit fraud with his two colleagues.
Woods left his role on July 2006, but at that time the trio had already managed to commit fraud. The other two accused, Campbell and Marbell, were found liable to knowingly enrolling ineligible students and assisting with GED scams and malicious applications for federal student aid. The three of them will face federal jail time of 5 years. Additionally, each will receive a 250.000 US dollars penalty as a result of Vatterott College lawsuit.
Series of class action lawsuit against Vatterott College
The sequence of class action lawsuit against Vatterott College owner was lodged after the shutdown of university campuses across the country. The abrupt closures of Vatterott College schools across the country came as a surprise to staff and students. However, it just follows a trending pattern by the business owning Vatterott College.
Over the previous couple of months, the Education Corporation of America has been shutting down its for-profit vocational colleges across the nation. This is the organization that purchased Vatterott in January. One of the shutdown colleges is Vatterott and they pursue a trend of not notifying staff and students before the shutdown. Those closing have already led to a sequence of class action lawsuits lodged in federal courts. One of the Vatterott College class action lawsuit happened on 7 December, Delaware District Court seeking a breach of the Worker Notification Act. Five former workers of American Education Corporation argue that their contracts were “terminated without appropriate legal notice” or “proper notification”. Another Vatterott College lawsuit occurred a couple of days ago in Delaware. It was rendering the same allegations.
Conclusion
After achieving agreements with learners regarding their supposed fraud, for-profit schools often don’t occur in the news. This kind of in-house agreements with students enables them to prevent agreeing to any wrongdoing. And also generally implies returning a part or all of the cash that they acquired fraudulently. So they no longer actually represented the college and had to compensate for their behavior. More recent internet allegations against the college show that concerning misrepresentations about accreditation, the college still offers substandard programs. It even has mortgage lending and registration methods.
About Vatterott College
Vatterott College was an approved career training institution. It offered multiple programs at campuses at 16 different locations in the USA and online. A private investment company called TA Associates owned the college. The university also provided its students with distant learning alternatives. It allows them to receive online degrees, diplomas, and certificates. These offered online programs were eCompanion Courses and were pretty popular among students. Distant learning students had access to all the resources on-campus students had. But, the college lost the Vatterott College lawsuit and shut down in 2018.