Federal Fraud In Farmington

[Meddle]

"ICE has arrested about 250 students who were enrolled at a fake university in Farmington Hills set up by ICE to lure in students. Tanya Wildt, Detroit Free Press

About 90 additional foreign students of a fake university in metro Detroit created by the Department of Homeland Security have been arrested in recent months.

A total of about 250 students have now been arrested since January on immigration violations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement [[ICE) as part of a sting operation by federal agents who enticed foreign-born students, mostly from India, to attend the school that marketed itself as offering graduate programs in technology and computer studies, according to ICE officials.

Many of those arrested have been deported to India while others are contesting their removals. One has been allowed to stay after being granted lawful permanent resident status by an immigration judge.

The students had arrived legally in the U.S. on student visas, but since the University of Farmington was later revealed to be a creation of federal agents, they lost their immigration status after it was shut down in January. The school was located on Northwestern Highway near 13 Mile Road in Farmington Hills and staffed with undercover agents posing as university officials."
https://www.freep.com/story/news/loc...it/4277686002/

Attorneys for the students arrested said they were unfairly trapped by the U.S. government since the Department of Homeland Security had said on its website that the university was legitimate. An accreditation agency that was working with the U.S. on its sting operation also listed the university as legitimate.

Everyone involved from the AUSA to the agents to the Immigration judges should be fired without their pensions.

[rickbak]

Jeezus. The University of Farmington?? Yeah, there's some credentials for ya. Right up there with getting your B.S. from Trump University.

[renf]

What laws regarding entrapment apply in this situation? Suppose I set
up a fake university for the explicit purpose of encouraging you to
violate a federal law? Isn't that entrapment or do I misunderstand
what was happening?

[softailrider]

Jeezus. The University of Farmington?? Yeah, there's some credentials for ya. Right up there with getting your B.S. from Trump University.

I thought there actually was a University of Farmington. It goes by another name: Oakland Community College [[Harvard by the highway)

[EastsideAl]

I agree with Meddle that every single person involved with this thing needs to be fired. Further, the people who conceived of this despicable entrapment scam and ran it should be in prison.

But even more than that, all those smug white nationalist anti-American bastards who are coming up with crap like this need to be forcibly ejected from power and any role in our public life and government ASAP.

[Don K]

My first reaction was WTF??, and my reaction remains WTF??. I bet Stephen Miller came in his pants when he learned about this one. Actually, since most undocumented immigrants in the Detroit metro seem to be Eastern European, and thus totally non-swarthy, I suppose the Detroit office was running under quota for deportations this year, and the Director needed to drum up some business to avoid an unfavorable performance review.

[Don K]

Someone also should look into the accrediting agency that worked with ICE on this atrocity. Gives accreditation a bad name.

[Richard]

I guess nobody read the entire article and just what was posted here.

Their true intent could not be clearer," Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Helms wrote in a sentencing memo this month for Rampeesa, one of the eight recruiters, of the hundreds of students enrolled. "While 'enrolled' at the University, one hundred percent of the foreign citizen students never spent a single second in a classroom. If it were truly about obtaining an education, the University would not have been able to attract anyone, because it had no teachers, classes, or educational services."


The UK just went through a similar purge.

Basically the recruiters collect a free from the potential students who know full well in advance that they will never attend any classes but under the student visa they receive permission to legally work in the United States while attend school.

The recruiters then give kick backs to the school administrators and teachers in order to log the students in as if they were attending class when they actually never step foot in a classroom.

So they were abusing the student visa work program and useing it to gain permission to work in the US.

The right people were jailed and or removed from the country.

The bird-dog recruiters collecting the fees.

The students who paid the fees knowing full well they were not going to be actually attending school.

The difference in this case verses the case in the UK it was not necessary to arrest school officials or teachers for taking bribes in order to sign off that the students were attending school when they were not.

Because they were government employees.

The government could have gone after an accredited school where this is happening and shut the school down.

But then what would have happened to the students,both US born and foreign born that were following the law?

They would have lost thier school and the foreign students would have lost thier scholarships and right to work.

So by the government setting this up they stopped the innocent from being harmed and only caught the ones knowingly committing crimes.

A foreign student applying for a student visa does not need a bird-dog to handle things for them,they can apply on thier own.

The only reason they need a bird-dog is because they have the connections to pay off the administration to say you are attending classes when you are not.

The only reason they are paying a bird-dog is to obtain permission to legally work in the United States and useing the student visa as a back door.

[Meddle]

Any of us with ethics surprised by Tricky Dicky's post?

[Richard]

Any of us with ethics surprised by Tricky Dicky's post?

Your style of ethics would have preferred that they went to the hundreds of accredited schools and weeded out those administrators and students and closed those schools while putting thousands of innocent students out of thier education?

It has nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with it is a risk when doing a crime,they got caught.

I agree with the question of who is actually giving these people an accreditation for a collage that is basically a post office box.

Why would you post just enough to get people riled up without posting the all of the facts?

[DeLemur]

Why assume what these kids and adults knew or did not know? Perhaps they thought the school was getting it together soon. Looks like a legit school, legit enough to get accreditation. If I was out money into the U of Farmington like they were, I'd be waiting for my classes as well. The troubling part is they have the Visa information. How hard is it to monitor people's Visa status and put out warrants out for them when they expire? To set up a fake University and lure students means you're going to get some honest kids who want to study, and that is as ugly and cold hearted as it gets.

[Richard]

Imagine the man hours and expense of hand picking and following hundreds of people across the country in hundreds of schools.

How is it any different then when the police set up a fake pawn shop to catch fences.

Or the DEA setting up as a supplier in order to catch drug dealers.

Or even as simple as a police officer sitting on the side of the road with radar in order to catch speeders?

Entrapment and cold hearted?

I posted where they said 100% that they got were enrolled but never spent a day in the classrooms.

[Johnnny5]

Why assume what these kids and adults knew or did not know? Perhaps they thought the school was getting it together soon. Looks like a legit school, legit enough to get accreditation. If I was out money into the U of Farmington like they were, I'd be waiting for my classes as well. The troubling part is they have the Visa information. How hard is it to monitor people's Visa status and put out warrants out for them when they expire? To set up a fake University and lure students means you're going to get some honest kids who want to study, and that is as ugly and cold hearted as it gets.

From what I have read this "University" only offered graduate level degree programs, so they were not targeting naïve 17-18 year old kids. Anyone that enrolled and paid for graduate level classes, but was never offered any classwork either knew full well that they were scamming the system, or they would/should have gone to the authorities with claims that they themselves were being scammed.

My guess is that if any students were innocently caught up in this mess they are not among the 250 people charged. In those instances the likelihood of conviction would be very low and far outweighed by the threat of lawsuits from the truly innocent. The government wanting to avoid accidently charging those with honest intentions is probably why we're just now seeing more charges nearly a year after this story broke.

[rickbak]

All this now has me questioning the value of my PhD from Wossamotta U [[Garden City campus).

[bust]

The way many are framing this it looks on the surface to be entrapment, but I encourage everyone to dig deeper into the details before rushing to judgment.

I hope no one innocent was caught up in this, but it's clear from the details if any were they were very few.

I rarely agree with Richard on anything, but the first two of his analogies in post #12 do apply. If setting up this fake university to nab the scammers was unjust, setting up a fake pawnshop or fake heroin supplier are too. The qualification with the second analogy being there is no chance anyone innocent would get caught up in the sting operation. And with the first analogy, like with the fake university, it is imperative to filter anyone innocent out.

That's not to suggest we shouldn't debate whether these are just law enforcement strategies. We can.

[Meddle]

If setting up this fake university to nab the scammers was unjust, setting up a fake pawnshop or fake heroin supplier is too. The qualification with the second analogy being there is no chance anyone innocent would get caught up in the sting operation. And with the first analogy, like with the fake university, it is important to filter anyone innocent out.

That's not to suggest we shouldn't debate whether these are just law enforcement strategies. We can.

Pawn shops, drug stings et al catch people who have already done something wrong. But pawn shops can be legitimate too.

There was nothing legitimate about this. It was set up to entice people to do something they might not have otherwise. The fake accreditation would have fooled people who tried to verify in earnest.

I say again, EVERYONE involved in this needs to be expelled from Government employment.

[CR75]

Here are the F-1 CPT guidelines for University of Michigan students [[this is the same visa type offered to "university of Farmington" students)

https://internationalcenter.umich.edu/students/f1-students/cpt

If you scroll down to the requirements for a "Full-time CPT", it does not seem to require any physical presence on-campus [[compared to Part-time CPT) and/or class attendance, provided a "Reduced Course-Load" is obtained.

How is this program any different from the one offered by the [[fake) university of Farmington?

I haven't made up my mind about this yet, so I am just trying to understand how the students were supposed to know that the whole thing was a scam vs. a real program.

[Danny]

Humm!!! Must be a bunch of Pakistani-East Indian Muslims that are doing a plot.

[Richard]

Here are the F-1 CPT guidelines for University of Michigan students [[this is the same visa type offered to "university of Farmington" students)

https://internationalcenter.umich.edu/students/f1-students/cpt

If you scroll down to the requirements for a "Full-time CPT", it does not seem to require any physical presence on-campus [[compared to Part-time CPT) and/or class attendance, provided a "Reduced Course-Load" is obtained.

How is this program any different from the one offered by the [[fake) university of Farmington?

I haven't made up my mind about this yet, so I am just trying to understand how the students were supposed to know that the whole thing was a scam vs. a real program.

Most of what I have seen in both here and the UK,which has a similar student program,it is centered in India.

Word gets around and it is no different then anything else.

If you want to legally work in the US then you can use the student visa program.

If you want to immigrant via paid marriage,you pay a marriage broker.

If you want to get across the southern border,you pay a coyote to smuggle you across the border.

Your intent from the start is to circumvent the system by exploiting the loophole,so their intent from the start is not to study.

The recruiters that were arrested were in essence the coyotes,thousands come the legal way and they receive an education while working and they do not get arrested,because they did it the correct way.

Seems like a lot of hassle in order to make a buck but it is mostly those with no education and no skills that cannot find work in thier country,even working here at $15 per hour is a lot of money,but once they get permission to work,it is easy to get lost in the system and stay.

Its like anything else,the few screw it up for those with good intentions and tighter restrictions are put in place in order to stop it that end up hurting those instead of the intended target.

Like I posted earlier,this way they targeted only the ones that knew they were circumventing the system from the start without disrupting the innocents.

It was a reverse scam sting,you know the lawyers are going to jump in because it is a multi million dollar cash business and win or lose it is an opportunity.

[Wesley Mouch]

...snip...
I haven't made up my mind about this yet, so I am just trying to understand how the students were supposed to know that the whole thing was a scam vs. a real program.

I'm not sure it matter whether is was a 'scam' or not.

The question is whether the presumptive 'students' had a right to remain in the USA or were they here illegally.

If they were here legally, then CPB and ICE would have no issue with them. They are visitors, and they are allowed to stay a certain period of time. If they have already over-stayed their visitor status, then they should go back regardless of their desire to find a school that would arrange a visa for them.

Of course this only makes sense if you believe that the USA has a moral right to limit access to the USA. If you believe that people who have over-stayed their visitor visas should be allowed to stay, then I'm sure you would consider any enforcement of the rules to be 'fraudulent'.

[CR75]

I'm not sure it matter whether is was a 'scam' or not.

The students were not arrested for 'overstaying' their visa. They were arrested for violating the terms of their current, valid F-1 visa by knowingly enrolling in a fake university. Had the university been real, like UM, they would not have been arrested.

My question is, did the students really know it was a scam? The CPT program at UM [[and I am sure at many other universities) seems to me identical to the one at the university of Farmington, since it does not require students to be enrolled in any class and/or any presence on-campus.

I don't care about any 'moral rights' or whatever, I am not interested in those discussions. I work in higher ed and I would just like to have some clarity on this CPT program, before we go out and advise students to transfer/enroll in these programs. I personally do not think I would have been able to discern the scam, especially since the "university" was fully accredited, and I have been working in higher ed for many years.

[Richard]

^ in order for the scam to work a professor has to sign the paper that the student physically attended the class.

I would think that if a student was enrolled in the CPT program there would also be a paper trail of the students involvement.

From what I have seen in the cases in both the UK and the US,students were involved in the program where they were supposed to be physically in class,professors signed off that they were in fact in class when they were not.

It only works if the professors agree to it.

That is not as common in established reputable universities etc.

The majority is with the setting up of a fake university with the sole intent to circumvent the system,no buildings,no classes etc,you will not see it to any extent in mainstream reputable,popular universities and colleges

If the students applied then they really have to be doing some kind of research into the school that they are attending,a room in an office Park is usually the first clue.

If one is going to advise students to enroll in programs I guess the simplest route would be to advise them to in-roll in university’s that you know are legitimate.

[ekleezy]

Or even as simple as a police officer sitting on the side of the road with radar in order to catch speeders?

More like a police officer putting up a fake 90MPH speed limit sign and then sitting on the side of the road with radar to catch drivers going faster than 70MPH.

[Richard]

More like a police officer putting up a fake 90MPH speed limit sign and then sitting on the side of the road with radar to catch drivers going faster than 70MPH.

Not really,because unless one lives in Montana,anybody with a lick of sense knows there are no speed limits based at 90 mph in the States.So they would be wary until they found out it was a legit speed.

Even at that,with the amount of people going 40 mph down the freeway in the fast lane while texting,nobody would not be able to cruise 90 mph anyways.

[ekleezy]

Not really,because unless one lives in Montana,anybody with a lick of sense knows there are no speed limits based at 90 mph in the States.So they would be wary until they found out it was a legit speed.

Montana - or maybe India?