![Greed. [Shutterstock/Jakub Krechowicz]](https://images.dailycaller.com/image/width=960,height=411,fit=cover,f=auto/https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/shutterstock_392380090-e1465330673718.jpg "Greed. [Shutterstock/Jakub Krechowicz]")
A for-profit college that abruptly shut down in 2013 has admitted in a new legal settlement that it engaged in massive fraud by falsifying records, lying to students, and hiring instructors who weren’t remotely qualified to teach their subjects.
At its peak, the American Career Institute (ACI) operated eight campuses in Maryland and Massachusetts, which offered certificate programs in fields like information technology, dental assisting, and medical coding. The school charged as much as $23,000 a year, and left many students hanging when it abruptly collapsed in 2013. That prompted an investigation from the attorney general’s office in Massachusetts.
Now, after three years of investigation and a lawsuit, the defunct school has reached an agreement with Massachusetts authorities in which it admits to gross fraud and other improprieties, which affected over 4,000 students between 2010 and 2013. (RELATED: Corinthian College Recruited Homeless People In Desperate Cash Grab)
Some of the behavior ACI admits to includes:
-Misrepresenting the school’s graduation and job-placement rates to make student prospects look better than they were.
-Hiring its own recent graduates on short-term contracts to inflate its job placement numbers
-Claiming ACI students had been hired by companies that did not actually exist
-Using high-pressure sales tactics that targeted “pain points” to recruit vulnerable students, often by falsely generating pressure that they had to enroll immediately even though the school had open admissions
-Enrolling students who were obviously incapable of completing their academic work, such as those who did not understand English
-Promising to provide students free books and computer software, but then reneging and making students pay for them.
-Altering student grades after the fact to improperly advance them through an academic program.
-Hiring totally unqualified personnel to teach, including its own recent graduates and people with no experience in the field they would teach.
The final judgment against ACI requires it to pay $25 million in fines, civil penalties and compensation for its behavior, but the Massachusetts AG office says the school’s insolvency means the vast majority of this judgment will go uncollected. All of the school’s former officials are barred for life from operating any job training programs in the state of Massachusetts.
Despite the school’s massive wrongdoing, only the 1,400 students who were attending when it shut down are automatically entitled to have their student loans discharged. But the admission of wrongdoing means other alumni who attended from 2010 onwards will have an easier time receiving relief on their own student loans.
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