A shuttered for-profit college chain — which used exotic dancers to recruit students — and its owner, who bilked the government out of millions of dollars in a federal student aid funding scheme, must pay the government more than $20 million in damages and penalties, a district court ruled.
U.S. District Judge Marcia G. Cooke handed down the ruling Feb. 15 after determining that Miami-based FastTrain College and its president and owner, Alejandro Amor, “defrauded the U.S. Department of Education by submitting falsified documents to obtain federal student aid funds in connection with ineligible students,” Wifred Ferrer, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said in a release Tuesday.
“The student victims in this case were especially vulnerable,” Cooke’s ruling said. “They were young people who, for whatever reasons, had not graduated high school. Realizing there are few jobs one can obtain without a high-school diploma or equivalent degree, they turned to FastTrain, hoping to learn marketable skills to improve their chances of making a decent living.”
The FastTrain empire, which grew to seven campuses across the state, including ones in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, came under suspicion after the FBI raided multiple campuses in May 2012. The campuses were soon shuttered.