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Absolutely. It was downright sinister of the DHS to implicate the students in this when they themselves legitimized the school in no less than three different places. To quote the article, "if you can't trust the government, who can you trust?"

I understand what the government says by "you have to know the law", but it's idiocy to expect everyone to be a lawyer, and instead we all use our best judgement.

Maybe the signs were clear that UNNJ were fake, maybe they weren't, but fraud implies a knowing and willful attempt to break the law, and almost all of these cases seem far from it. It's shameful to make most of these students appear in immigration court.

Yeah, it's hard to think of an analogous scheme. It'd be as if in "To Catch a Predator", the state legislature's website was altered temporarily to lower the age of consent.

Or if there was online verification of your date's driver's license that was faked to show she was of legal age, solely to entrap you.

It'd be like if you go to another country and the government there tells you the age of consent is 16 and you meet a girl who claims to be 24. You've seen her government issued ID and it says she is 24. Then it turns out she is actually 17 and the age of consent is actually 18 and it was all an elaborate ruse to catch you-- you sexual deviant!

It's more like if you go to a service that promises to provide 13 year old girls, but with legitimate ID that says that they're 18. This was a school that guaranteed that you wouldn't have to attend a school.

Some of these students need to sue the government over this. But I doubt they will have the resources or the standing to do so. At the end of the day who wins from doing this? The US government? No. The students. No. America? No. No one wins. It's just big bureaucracy justifying its budget and its existence.

US has 300 million people. 1,000 students make little difference. Whether legal or not.

It looked legitimate except for the part where you didn't have to go any classes or learn anything. You don't have to be a lawyer to understand that goes against the spirit of the law - and if your intent is to walk that line not getting a lawyer is irresponsible.

However, the university always had a reason to postpone the courses, just like scammers.

In that story, the university was the scammer, always asking for a few more days to "get their money back" and giving them a good faith gift as soon as students started asking questions.

Then, the government punished them for biting to the government run scam.

Isn't this made a bit murkier by the fact that practical training through work experience can be a legitimate part of such a course of study? It's not like they were working at maccas or something.

There are other visas for that. I did an internship on a J-1 for example. I would find it hard to believe these students didn't know what they were doing was questionable.

I feel like basically everything about immigration law seems to go against the spirit of the law in that sense.

E.g., one of the most common ways to get a work permit in the US is to do a university degree, then you get to work for one year ("OPT"), during which your employer can apply for an H1B visa for you.

But the literal meaning of OPT is "optional practical training", and your job is referred to as "practical training" in all documents. Of course it's nothing of the sort, it's just a job. For me, coming from a foreign country, this seems super dodgy and against the spirit of the law. But it's completely standard and above-the-board.

> It looked legitimate except for the part where you didn't have to go any classes or learn anything.

So just like most Ivy League schools?

Laws that are self-defeating to their ostensible purpose are almost the norm at this point, though. I don't expect anyone, as a matter of law, to say "wait, that's ridiculous, that incentivizes me to do X, when obviously the law exists to promote not-X, so obviously this scheme to ramp up our X is shady."

If you want an example, here's one off the cuff: the law that says you can only bring free water out at restaurants if the patron asks. If anything, the automatic water displaces the consumption of other drinks, which generally require other ag products that are far more rainwater intense per liter consumed. So if I'm a waiter, am I undermining or supporting "the spirit of that law" if I remind people to ask?

Where is that law? I know tons of restaurants that offer free water without being asked.

Recent California thing: http://sf.eater.com/2015/3/17/8237891/serving-water-californ...

Not sure it's just me or if I have misread this, but the article says the university claimed it has classes before DHS announced it was fake and provides no classes at all. Quote: "...and Twitter messages about classes canceled because of bad weather". In that sense, even though it is doubtable on whether this sting operation is an entrapment for students in a legal term, it is an "entrapment" for the students in the fact. Presumably, We can see that before government shut down the university, students were only been told "you don't HAVE TO go to class" for some period of time when they were in CPT (or internship), but NOT been told the university NEVER had and won't going to have any classes. Being in the lie that the university may hold class somewhere, or in the future, and it was relatively new and totally legitimate, students could buy it and participate into this later known "scheme".

> According to some students, brokers assured them that they could immediately earn credit hours for their work experience in a program called Curricular Practical Training, without taking classes.

Now, this crosses the line, IMHO. You see, getting credit for work experiences at universities is not unheard of, where I come from. At least for undergraduate level.

It is very easy to convince someone that it's the same deal.

> Most of the students were from China and India, where working with brokers is a familiar way of doing business. But in retrospect, they seem to have ignored what should have been red flags, whether because they were overly trusting, willfully ignorant or willing participants in visa fraud.

Well, isn't this the definition of scam?

It is likely that some of them caught on and decided to go through anyway. But I'd guess that a higher percentage were just preyed on on their naiveté.

> whether because they were overly trusting, willfully ignorant or willing participants in visa fraud

or just frustrated with that shitty visa system.

The flip side of this is:

“All purported students are recorded at some point or another fully going along with the pay-to-stay scheme.”

There are both audio and video recordings from the president’s office in New Jersey, when students called or visited, Mr. Phillips said. He personally witnessed some of these exchanges, and heard students admit they knew the university would not have classes.

If that's true, then it's going to be hard to convince a judge that the student thought it wasn't a scam. Clear evidence of the student agreeing to attend the university even though it would never host a class is hard to refute.

But if this "university" was a government-run thing, isn't that entrapment?

If it wasn't government run, and they would have still 'enrolled' anyway, no.

Though arguably, if it wasn't 'accredited', many of the students probably wouldn't have enrolled, and it was only accredited 'to cooperate with the government's investigation'...

Entrapment is only a defense when the cops induce you to do something that you wouldn't have done anyway. They're going to have a hard time using the entrapment defense if they deliberately searched out a university that clearly wasn't in the business of teaching students.

If I were in their shoes, I would find the university very suspect, and possibly unethical. But if I saw that they were an accredited university and certified by DHS, I'd assume that they were exploiting a legal loophole.

Not to mention as above did, that they were promised credits for work experience, which is common at colleges, and removes the idea of "no classes" as a red flag if your workplace is considered a classroom.

This is a claim by the prosecution and doesn't necessarily reflect the reality of the situation.

  According to some students, brokers assured them that they could 
  immediately earn credit hours for their work experience in a program 
  called Curricular Practical Training, without taking classes

'Work Experience', 'Internships', this sort of work-for-credit system exists on every major college campus in the US. Is it inconceivable that you can see people talking about such things and consider not going explicitly to a class as still being above board?

If it was so obvious that it wasn't legitimate, then how come the NJED was fooled?

They may have been part of the scheme, such as when the 5-star hotel agrees to host cops running a prostitution sting.

That seems a little different.

From the article:

So did the website of the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges, a national body. Its director, Michale S. McComis, later said he had certified the university in order to cooperate with the government’s investigation.

Out of all of the schools in the United States, they paid a premium to go to one that didn't have any classes. Whether or not they knew that wasn't the intent of a student visa, I 1) believe they should have known, and 2) believe at the least that they've made it clear that they aren't interested in studying in the US. They can find a equivalent curriculum which offers no classes and no instruction anywhere in the world; I offer one for free.