CBS News examined a recently unsealed whistleblower case in which members of the military were targeted for their Tuition Assistance dollars. The lawsuit outlines a scheme to get service members to sign up for online certificate courses which were not eligible for the government money. Click on the video above to watch the CBS report by correspondent Sharyl Attkisson.
The James Hoyer Law Firm represents whistleblower Adam Boyce who came forward to the government after concerns that Army National Guard members were being subjected to a bait and switch for online certificate courses. Boyce was a marketing director for a middleman company called Ed4Mil. Ed4Mil recruited soldiers to take online classes at a private school in New Jersey, just outside of New York City, called Caldwell College.
After working at Ed4Mil for several months, Boyce discovered the online courses were actually provided by another school called Penn Foster, which did not qualify to receive Army Tuition Assistance for the certificate courses being offered, like Gun-Smithing, Jewelry Design and Medical Billing and Coding.
Making matters worse, the courses being sold to National Guard members as Caldwell College classes were marked up to cost 6-times more than civilians were charged for the Penn Foster courses. A typical course at Penn Foster cost about $700, but when sold as a Caldwell Course, was marked up to about $4500, which is the maximum amount of Tuition Assistance a service member can receive in one year.
Boyce was outraged to discover that members of the military were being deceived and that taxpayers were paying for it. His whistleblower case seeks to recover millions of dollars for the U.S. Government which were paid to Caldwell College and Ed4Mil, to which the lawsuit alleges they were not entitled. The case is pending in U.S. District Court in the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
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