Dec. 16 (UPI) — Five people were sentenced Thursday for conspiring to the defraud the U.S. Department of Education’s financial aid programs of over $12 million in federal funds.
“According to court documents, from around August 2010 through May 2018, the defendants created and ran an elaborate sham university — the Columbus, Georgia, satellite campus of Apex School of Theology,” the Department of Justice said in a press release on Friday.
According to the Justice Department, the former director of Apex Columbus, Sandra Anderson, “enrolled hundreds of individuals who were not qualified and who had no desire to obtain a theological education to pose as students. The defendants and their co-conspirators then worked together to fraudulently complete financial aid applications in students’ names and to complete students’ homework and exams.”
Anderson and her co-conspirators then completed financial aid applications in students’ names and either stole the refund checks or asked students to cash them and hand over a portion of the money.
Sandra Anderson was sentenced to 108 months in prison; Yolanda Brown Thomas was sentenced to 63 months; Kristina Parker was sentenced to four years; Erica Montgomery was sentenced to 51 months; and Leo Frank Thomas was sentenced to three years.
All five defendants will have to jointly pay $11.8 million in restitution to the Department of Education.
