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Indians Plead Guilty to Student Visa Fraud Charges in U.S.
Friday, 01 May 2015, 22:28 IST |
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According to the indictment filed in this case, the three were associated with the Micropower Career Institute, a for-profit school with five campuses in New York and New Jersey, as well as with the Institute for Health Education (IHE), a for-profit school located in New Jersey.
Mr Hiranandaney was MCI's President; his brother-in-law Lalit Chabria was its Vice President and and his sister Anita MCI's Vice President.
The three failed to report to immigration authorities that foreign citizens were not attending classes at their institutes, despite a federal law requirement that foreign citizens on student visas must pursue full courses of study at the approved schools.
If a student fails to attend classes as required, the school is required to inform immigration authorities so that the authorities may terminate that student's visa.
The three fraudulently portrayed MCI and IHE to immigration authorities as legitimate institutes of higher learning where foreign students carried full course loads.
However, in reality, the majority of foreign students at MCI and IHE did not attend the required number of classes and the institutes continued to collect millions of dollars in tuition from the students with delinquent attendance.
When a campus of MCI came under regulatory scrutiny, the defendants and others transferred foreign students with delinquent attendance to affiliated schools (such as another MCI campus or IHE) that were not under scrutiny.
In another scheme, the three individuals falsified documents in student financial aid files at MCI in order to hide MCI's failure to timely return financial aid funds received by it for domestic students who had dropped out.
In violation of federal laws, the MCI also failed to return to the Department of Education substantial sums of financial aid funds that the department had disbursed to the institute for domestic students who dropped out without an authorised leave of absence.
Specifically, the defendants and others falsified student files by altering documents in the files and in some cases created entirely fabricated documents to conceal MCI's failure to return funds to the department while ensuring that its eligibility for future financial aid funds doesn't get affected.
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Source: PTI
