You heard it here 1st. https://www.newsweek.com/betsy-devos-could-face-jail-after-judge-rules-violated-2018-order-1463764 BETSY DEVOS COULD FACE JAIL AFTER JUDGE RULES SHE VIOLATED 2018 ORDER ON STUDENT LOANS DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been threatened with the possibility of jail after a judge deemed she was violating a court order for continuing to collect student debts on a now-defunct school. That ruling, handed down in June of 2018, was made by U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim and prevented DeVos and her Department of Education for going after former students at the bankrupt Corinthian Colleges Inc. However, Kim said she was "astounded" to discover that DeVos was violating the court order at a hearing in San Francisco on Monday after a filing by the Education Department earlier disclosed that more than 16,000 former students at Corinthian College "were incorrectly informed at one time or another ... that they had payments due on their federal student loans." At least 1,800 people reportedly lost wages or tax refunds according to the filing. "At best it is gross negligence, at worst it's an intentional flouting of my order," Kim said, reported Bloomberg. "I'm not sure if this is contempt or sanctions," she added. "I'm not sending anyone to jail yet but it's good to know I have that ability." The case traces its way back to 2015 when Corinthian had been among the largest for-profit college chains in the United States until a wave of investigations and litigation—including a complaint by the 2020 presidential hopeful and then California Attorney General Kamala Harris—alleged widespread deception and fraud. The company then filed for bankruptcy protection the same year and the federal government later ruled that as many as 335,000 former students could be entitled to have their debts cancelled under The Borrower Defense to Repayment program—an initiative started in 2016 to provide loan relief for students who had been defrauded by predatory schools. However once DeVos took over the Department of Education in 2017, numerous attempts were made to limit the scope of the program, in addition to effectively ignoring roughly 160,000 applications made for loan forgiveness, according to a New York Times report. In 2017, a class action suit by approximately 80,000 Corinthian students sued the Education Department, alleging that the body had ceased to forgive the loans. Instead of showing their compliance with the loan relief program, Education Department filings revealed that they instead were still pursuing students for loan repayment and had only pardoned 10 student loans. "There have to be consequences for violation of my order sixteen thousand times," Kim said, according to a release. Additionally, Kim ordered for the lawsuit against DeVos to go "full-steam ahead" and ordered lawyers for both camps to file the relevant filings to assist her in ruling whether DeVos is, in fact, in contempt of court. Eileen Connor, legal director at the Project on Predatory Student Lending, the not-for-profit Harvard University project which represents the 80,000 students, told Bloomberg: "We think contempt is clear on the record presently before the court, and expect that the court will issue that finding, regardless of what sanctions are imposed." Harvard lawyer Toby Merrill told Newsweek that the education secretary's actions were "truly unbelievable." Merrill said in this case, she was confident that a contempt of court ruling would be brought. "I don't want to put any words in the judge's mouth," she said, "but I think based on the evidence, it's unquestionable that the Department of Education is in contempt of the court order. There really is no factual question about it." Although jail time is an option at the judge's disposal, Merrill said it was unlikely that DeVos would end up behind bars. Kim is more likely to take actions such as imposing fines, ordering weekly update reports and assigning a judge to monitor further compliance.
https://thehill.com/homenews/admini...10-million-in-aid-to-students-at-unaccredited Trump admin gave over $10 million in aid to students at unaccredited for-profit colleges The Education Department provided $10.7 million in federal loans and grants to students at for-profit unaccredited colleges, according to documents released Tuesday by the House Education and Labor Committee. The funds were provided to the Illinois Institute of Art and the Art Institute of Colorado even though officials were aware they were ineligible to receive the aid. The latest documents expand on prior reports that detailed efforts by Education Department officials to protect Dream Center Education Holdings, the owner of the Art Institutes and Argosy University, from punishment for lying to students about the accreditation of its now-closed schools. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), the chairman of the Education Committee, is threatening to subpoena Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for more documents about her agency’s role in Dream Center’s actions. The Education Department has defended its actions. “It seems to us that the chairman is cherry-picking facts and lacking important context,” Angela Morabito, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, told The Washington Post, which was the first to report the news. “The department maintains that it acted in the best interest of students and has continued to act in the best interest of students.” Morabito told The Hill that the department has received Scott's letter and "will continue to comply with all lawful oversight requests." For-profit colleges are mandated by law to be fully accredited to participate in federal student aid programs. The Higher Learning Commission, which is responsible for accrediting institutions, voiced concerns about the quality of education at the two campuses in 2018 and downgraded their status for up to four years, according to the Post. However, Dream Center continued to advertise that its schools were accredited even after a public notice was issued instructing the company to inform students of the downgrade. Students continued to enroll and the schools continued garnering federal funds. “The grant of temporary nonprofit status was directed at what had at that time, been a five-month lapse in eligibility, and five months where Dream Center was receiving funds in violation of [the Higher Education Act] and accompanying regulations,” Scott wrote in a letter Tuesday to DeVos. “This special treatment allowed more students to become entangled in Dream Center, magnifying the abrupt closure of the schools and the displacement of thousands of students.” Former Art Institute of Colorado and Illinois Institute of Art students are suing DeVos and the Education Department over accusations that they issued unlawful student loans they say they should not be forced to repay. “Had I known what was going on, I would have had time to evaluate the situation, maybe transfer before wasting time and money,” Robert J. Infusino, one of the students involved in the case, told the Post. “I thought the government was supposed to look out for students. I feel betrayed.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/educ...mpt-loan-case-slaps-education-dept-with-fine/ Federal judge holds DeVos in contempt in loan case, slaps Education Dept. with $100,000 fine A federal judge on Thursday held Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in contempt for violating an order to stop collecting loan payments from former Corinthian Colleges students. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco slapped the Education Department with a $100,000 fine for violating a preliminary injunction. Money from the fine will be used to compensate the 16,000 people harmed by the federal agency’s actions. Some former students of the defunct for-profit college had their paychecks garnished. Others had their tax refunds seized by the federal government. DeVos violated a court order to stop collecting on the debts of Corinthian College students. Now, they want her held in contempt. “There is no question that the defendants violated the preliminary injunction. There is also no question that defendants’ violations harmed individual borrowers,” Kim wrote in her ruling Thursday. “Defendants have not provided evidence that they were unable to comply with the preliminary injunction, and the evidence shows only minimal efforts to comply.” The judge has ordered the department to provide monthly status reports on its efforts to follow her order and rectify the harm it inflicted upon borrowers. Failure to comply with this latest order could result in additional sanctions.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profil...urce=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf Federal Judge Invites Scammed Students to Propose Additional Punishments for Betsy DeVos The courts have had it up to here with Department of Education (DOE) Secretary Betsy DeVos and her agency’s repeat—and apparently ongoing—violation of court orders that require her to stop milking scammed college students for student loan repayments. And now, it’s the students’ turn to potentially bring some pain. In a terse and harsh two-page filing on Tuesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim called out DeVos for her unlawful efforts to extract those payments from the student victims—who are plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against the DOE over those illegal actions taken to force and coerce federal remuneration. Judge Kim noted: The compliance reports filed by [DeVos and the DOE] have introduced new material facts that are directly relevant to the amount of sanctions appropriate to compensate for [DeVos and the DOE’s] flagrant and continuing violation of the preliminary injunction. That injunction was issued in May 2018 and barred DeVos from collecting student loan debt payments from a huge class of borrowers who were scammed by for-profit scammers Corinthian Colleges. DeVos and the DOE were initially dinged by the court–and DeVos herself was held in contempt–after admittedly violating that court order by forcing some 16,000 former students to pay back their loans. Law&Crime previously reported on that violation in September 2019–noting that DOE lawyers confessed to sending collections materials to several thousand student borrowers who paid for educational programs that DeVos herself had previously described as “worthless.” Thousands of student borrowers targeted by the DOE were unable to pay the improperly sent bills–and subsequently had their credit scores tanked, tax rebates trimmed and paychecks garnished due to the improper reporting. The DOE was forced to issue refunds over the alleged snafu. The initial compliance report noted: [T]he [DOE] has determined to issue refunds to all class members who made payments on their loans during a period of time when the Court’s preliminary injunction placed them into forbearance. The [DOE] will also be sending such borrowers notices informing them that they will be receiving refunds, also on a rolling basis, as the borrowers are identified. The court at first offered patience to the education secretary and her agency’s serially-bumbled response. The judicial tide, however, turned decidedly against DeVos and her underlings after a December 2019 filing revealed that the DOE had actually understated its violations by more than double the actual number. As Law&Crime reported late last year, the DOE admittedly made several errors when contacting students enrolled in the “worthless” educational programs. “[A]n updated total of 45,801 borrowers were erroneously taken out of forbearance or stopped collections status, which includes approximately 29,000 borrowers identified since the November Report, and the original 16,034 identified in the November Report that still remain in the class,” the December compliance report said. Weeks later, attorneys for the student plaintiffs filed a motion seeking to exact a much harsher penalty against DeVos and the DOE, citing their “contumacious conduct” and their “ongoing noncompliance [which] is unfortunate, disturbing, and harmful.” The students’ motion went on: [T]he Court’s Sanctions Order was entered on the basis of the record before it at the time, which was grossly inaccurate. The record at the time showed, based on Defendants’ representations in the Initial Compliance Report, that they had violated the injunction 16,000 times by seeking to collect the loans of individuals covered by the injunction. In fact, this representation was off by almost 300 percent. Likewise, the number of people suffering compensable harm in the form of deprivation of money (through “voluntary” payments in response to an unlawful demand for collection, or because Defendants seized their tax refunds and/or wages) or adverse credit reporting was grossly understated. On Tuesday, Judge Kim took measures to help the students make their case. “On October 24, 2019, this court issued an order sanctioning [DeVos and the DOE] in the amount of $100,000 for noncompliance with the preliminary injunction entered in this case,” the court’s order notes. “The court simultaneously ordered [DeVos and the DOE] to file monthly compliance reports and tasked the parties with developing a plan for distribution of the sanctions fund to the [student plaintiff] class members injured by [DeVos and the DOE’s] conduct. Plaintiffs now seek leave to file a motion for partial reconsideration of the court’s sanctions order. They argue that, because [the] compliance reports have demonstrated noncompliance with the preliminary injunction far in excess of that originally estimated, the court should revisit the amount of sanctions imposed on [DeVos and the DOE].” “Accordingly, the court hereby grants [the student plaintiffs] motion for leave to file a motion for partial reconsideration,” Kim’s order concludes. Those defrauded students will now be allowed to argue why the original $100,000 contempt fine against DeVos should be increased. Expect some fireworks and woe in those eventual arguments.
DeVos was one of his shittiest appointments, along with Ben Carson, and should be shit canned immediately.
Gross negligence? Don't you mean "extreme carelessness"? Because saying it that way means you don't get charged with anything.