We reported in September on a Federal Trade Commission action to shut down a chain of scam websites aimed at attracting people who wanted to join the U.S. military. Sites operating at domains including Army.com, Air-Force.com, and Navyenlist.com seemed like official military portals, but their real aim was to steer visitors to high-priced, low-quality for-profit
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The Federal Trade Commission today obtained an agreement from for-profit college lead generation operators to hand over the army.com, air-force.com, armyenlist.com, navyenlist.com, and other internet domains, which they used to trick people into believing their operations were associated with the U.S. military. Unfortunately, as is often the case, the FTC settled for a promise not
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A former employee of a call center that pushed students into predatory for-profit colleges has initiated a blockbuster whistleblower lawsuit on behalf of taxpayers against his former employer, Utah-based EduTrek, and against numerous for-profit colleges that have used the company to recruit new students. The complaint, filed with the federal court in Utah in 2016,
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Last week the Federal Trade Commission announced it had reach a proposed settlement with a Pittsburgh-based marketing company called Victory Media. Victory had drawn attention for websites and print magazines that deceptively pitched a large audience of military troops and veterans on Kaplan University and other for-profit colleges with poor records of serving students. The
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As eight years of zigzagging but ultimately valiant efforts by the Obama administration to protect students and taxpayers from predatory for-profit colleges comes to a close, new documents, released to us under the Freedom of Information Act, shed light on a key chapter in that saga: The 2015 demise of one of the most abusive
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The Federal Trade Commission announced yesterday its first settlement with an education lead generation company, Orlando-based Expand, Inc., and its owner, Ayman “Alec” El-Difrawi, for alleged deceptive practices. The FTC contends that Expand, which operates under the names Gigats, EducationMatch and SoftRock, has been claiming to visitors to its websites that it is “pre-screening” job applicants, when in fact it is
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The U.S. Department of Education last week sent warning letters to two businesses, demanding that the companies stop using the Department’s official logos, or marks, without authorization. One of them, Arcadia, California-based MC Business Group LLC apparently has been running one of the many operations promising people help with managing their student loans, for a fee, even though, as
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A website displaying McDonalds’ famed golden arches and promising jobs at the fast-food empire quickly pushes visitors instead to recruiters at for-profit colleges, including those owned by two of the largest and most troubled companies in this sector — ITT Tech and Education Management Corporation (EDMC). Republic Report has exposed in the past websites that promise
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