At ATI, students could take courses to train them for jobs in automotive, health care, business, information technology and other fields.Īccording to the whistleblower suit, ATI falsified documents to enroll “as many students as possible” in programs with tuitions ranging from $13,741 to $46,744 per program. Pell Grants provide government aid to students from low-income families. The reason: “to keep her silent” and deny her access to school records, the lawsuit said. Ramirez-Damon claimed she was abruptly demoted in April 2011 and transferred off the Fort Lauderdale campus at 2890 NW 62 nd Street to a job as an instructor in Miami. She said she notified her superiors, but that company management chose “to look the other way.” The whistleblower lawsuit alleges that within a month of Ramirez-Damon’s hiring in October 2009 it became apparent to her that ATI was engaged in active Pell Grant fraud.
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Clay Shaw, R-Fort Lauderdale and Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton and Charlie Crist, the ex-Republican and ex-governor and presumed frontrunner for the Democratic nomination to challenge Republican Gov.
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While there, he contributed tens of thousands of dollars to a bipartisan array of Congressional candidates, according to federal election records.įlorida recipients of Benjamin’s largess include: Rep. Here’s a link to a You Tube video he made about ATI when he was CEO.īenjamin worked at ATI from 2005 to 2011.
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Benjamin, a resident of Delray Beach.īenjamin, who now runs Salt Lake City-based Stone Mountain Investments, did not return a phone message left with his office. BenjaminĪTI has changed hands a couple of times in recent years, with the current owner being Texas-based Ancora Holdings.īut according to Gries, “all of these allegations” engulfing ATI occurred under the leadership of former ATI Chief Executive and Chairman Arthur E. Neither Ferrer’s office, nor Ramirez-Damon’s Miami lawyer, Bjorg Eikeland, responded to requests for comment.įormer ATI CEO and Chairman Arthur E. “We are committed to ensuring that federal student aid is used for the benefit of students.” Attorney Wifredo Ferrer said in a press release. “Federal financial aid is there to help students attain their dreams and goals, and misuse of these funds to increase corporate profits is unacceptable,” Miami U.S. The Department of Justice’s press release said ATI’s payment would resolve allegations it “falsely certified compliance with federal student aid programs’ eligibility requirements and submitted claims for ineligible students.”ĪTI also allegedly misrepresented its job placement statistics to authorities in Texas in order to maintain its licensing and accreditation, the press release said.įederal prosecutors in Miami, Washington, and Texas investigated, along with the Department of Education’s Inspector General. 7 in Ramirez-Damon’s case for the purposes of settlement, court records say.
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They share in any recovery, in this case up to 25 percent plus attorney fees.Īfter investigating, the government decided to intervene on Aug. Private individuals bring false claim lawsuits in the name of the United States. It alleged that ATI had engaged in a “systematic and nationwide fraudulent practice of forging documents and records to create an appearance of student eligibility in order to receive federal funds.Ī similar whistleblower action was filed in federal court in northern Texas in 2009.
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Ramirez-Damon’s False Claims Act complaint was filed in secret in July 2011. The settlement resolved a pair of federal whistleblower complaints, including one filed in federal court by Dulce Ramirez-Damon, ATI’s former assistant director of education in Fort Lauderdale. It was valued at more than $400 million.ĪTI’s South Florida training schools in Fort Lauderdale, Oakland Park, the Doral area west of Miami International Airport, and Miami Gardens closed at the end of last year, Gries said. Gries.Īt its height a few years ago, privately held ATI boasted 24 campuses in five states with more than 3,000 employees and 16,000 students. The settlement, announced by the Justice Department last week, comes as crisis managers liquidate the Texas-based company by selling off assets and transferring or referring students to other schools, according to interim CEO Michael F. A for-profit career school operator with once-bustling campuses in Broward and Miami-Dade counties agreed this month to pay $3.7 million to the government to settle whistleblower fraud claims.ĪTI Enterprises, which operated as ATI Career Training Center, agreed to the payout while denying accusations it had recruited students at homeless shelters, strip clubs and among criminals, then forged paperwork to make them eligible for thousands of dollars in federal tuition grants and loans.