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California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta on Tuesday announced charges in an alleged multimillion-dollar student loan debt relief scam that prosecutors say stole from more than 19,000 victims in less than three years.

The alleged leader of the scam, Angela Mirabella, owned a network of debt relief businesses based in Orange County that operated call centers that promised to reduce or eliminate federal student loan debt, Bonta said. Prosecutors have accused Mirabella, as well as four call center managers and two sales agents, of stealing more than $6,130,000 from the victims, including 3,000 who lived in California.

An Orange County grand jury this month indicted Mirabella, as well as codefendants Cesar Sandoval-Vilchis, Stephen Gamboa, Briana Graham, Matthew Walsh, Teresa Lovato and Paulina Pacheco, on counts including grand theft by false pretenses, unauthorized use of personal identifying information, and unauthorized computer access and fraud. Mirabella faces special allegations for money laundering totaling more than $2.5 million and aggravated white-collar crime.

It was not immediately clear who is representing the defendants.

“Our students worked hard to achieve their college dreams, but for some their dreams have become horrific nightmares,” said Bonta at a news conference. “They were swindled; they were scammed.”

California officials and community college staff have uncovered what is believed to be one of the state’s largest college financial aid scam attempts.

According to prosecutors, between 2017 and 2020, Mirabella’s sales agents contacted about 380,000 student loan borrowers. The agents pretended to be associated with the U.S. Department of Education and told borrowers they could enroll them in programs that would lead to debt forgiveness, Bonta said.

If the borrowers hesitated, prosecutors alleged, the agents would pressure the victims by saying that their offers applied for a limited time and that there wasn’t another way to obtain student loan forgiveness.

The call centers also allegedly used personal identifying information that the borrowers disclosed to make changes to their Federal Student Aid accounts without their permission.

Each victim either paid or was scheduled to pay the call centers upfront fees and monthly fees of more than $1,000 for services, prosecutors said. Most mistakenly thought that the payments were going toward their student loan debt, causing many of them to stop making monthly payments on their student loans and resulting in late payment notifications and higher loan balances.

Bonta said student loan borrowers can reach out to lawhelpca.org to get free legal aid. He emphasized that the Department of Education does not charge fees to borrowers to qualify for loan forgiveness programs or change repayment plans.

“If you’re being charged with any of this, you may be a victim of a scam, and we want to hear from you,” he said.

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أحد أضخم وأهم البرامج التلفزيونيّة العالميّة. يتميّز بفكرته ومبدئه في إختيار المواهب الغنائيّة، بإعتماده على الصوت فقط ، من دون التأثّر بأي عوامل خارجة عن نطاق الصوت والأداء الحيّ ، فضلاً عن مراحله المشوّقة التي ساهمت في تحقيقه نجاحات ملفتة على الصعيد العالمي. الهدف واضح والمهمّة واحدة: البحث عن أحلى صوت وأجمل موهبة في العالم العربيّ، من خلال تجربة تلفزيونيّة فريدة من نوعها، يعيش فيها المشاهد كما المشترك لحظات الحسم ويختبر المراحل الثلاثة

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QCOSTARICA – The intervention team of the Consejo Nacional de Vialidad (Conavi) – National Highway Council, created after the “cochinilla” scandal for alleged corruption in road works, presented the first report of findings to the Board of Directors last Thursday.

One of the main problems detected by the group in this first stage of analysis is the system that Conavi uses to serve the national road network, where the premise is “what is worst is served first.”

The Deputy Minister of Infrastructure and acting director of Conavi, Tomás Figueroa Malavassi, assured that this mechanism not only implies that more resources are spent but also favored situations such as those under investigation.

Figueroa explained that the modality used so far has been implemented by the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation (MOPT) since the 1980s, to plan the attention of the road network.

This system establishes that the roads with the greatest deterioration must be attended to immediately with periodic maintenance, which involves repairing the damage.

“It has been demonstrated that this is not the optimal concept when managing a network, because when the pavement is allowed to deteriorate to a certain point, the investment that must be made in that periodic maintenance can be four times or more than that which should have been made with routine (preventive) maintenance, he explained.

As he said, the appropriate thing would be to first conserve what is in good condition because they are lower-cost tasks and in this way, the larger investments can be attended as a budget is established and thus within a certain period of time it is possible to have the entire network in a good state.

This mismanagement has even been pointed out by the Comptroller General of the Republic, for which the group determined that it is something that cannot wait any longer.

“The issue of pavement management systems is mandatory, there is the bulk of the investment of Conavi’s resources; if we manage to implement the pavement system, that would help to contain situations that are under investigation,” he said.

In order to expedite this change, the team recommended regulating article 24 of the Conavi Creation Law, so that it is mandatory for road maintenance activities to use this proposal.

Said article establishes the regulations that MOPT and Conavi must follow for the attention of the road network.

General research

Another of the actions presented by the group was to create a body that investigates not only the officials allegedly involved in the corruption case but to determine if there could be more people involved.

Figueroa also said that, in that first statement of results, it was the team that led to the recommendation to suspend payments of salaries to officials under investigation, that were separated from their functions, and their salary used to pay replacements or as savings if the functions can be filled by MOPT personnel.

The vice minister said that they have also given priority to the issue of road maintenance, since these works have been paralyzed for almost a year.

“What is being done is determining the way to contract basic activities such as patching, veneering, cleaning gutters and sewers,” he said.

For these urgent works, a period of up to three months was set and subsequently hiring by zones for periodic maintenance work on roads with greater deterioration would begin.

In addition, it was decided that emergency care for the next few months would be done through the figure of unpredictability.

In future reports, the interim director of Conavi advanced, issues related to the adjudications questioned in the Cochinilla Case would be analyzed, as well as the need to standardize contracts and contracting methods, simplify documents in order to have greater transparency and minimize objections. to the poster and appeals.

Initially, the supervisory body was created for a period of six months; however, that period could be extended.

The Conavi’s instruction is that said team should intervene the Management of Conservation of Roads and Bridges, the Management of Contracting of Roads and Bridges, the Directorate of Institutional Procurement, the Management of Acquisition and Finance and the Management of Legal Affairs Management.

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أحد أضخم وأهم البرامج التلفزيونيّة العالميّة. يتميّز بفكرته ومبدئه في إختيار المواهب الغنائيّة الصغيرة، بإعتماده على الصوت فقط، من دون التأثّر بأي عوامل خارجة عن نطاق الصوت والأداء الحيّ ، فضلاً عن مراحله المشوّقة التي ساهمت في تحقيقه نجاحات ملفتة على الصعيد العالمي. الهدف واضح والمهمّة واحدة: البحث عن أحلى صوت في العالم العربيّ، من خلال تجربة تلفزيونيّة فريدة من نوعها، يعيش فيها المشاهد كما المشترك لحظات الحسم ويختبر المراحل الثلاثة التي يتألّف منها البرنامج

A federal grand jury is investigating payments to consultants and council members involved in cannabis licensing in Baldwin Park and two other San Gabriel Valley cities, according to published reports.

The primary focus of the investigation appears to be on Baldwin Park, but the FBI and Internal Revenue Service also have sought information about consultants that crossed over to El Monte and Montebello as well, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The federal investigation into Baldwin Park’s rocky cannabis rollout became public last year when agents raided the homes and offices of Baldwin Park City Attorney Robert Tafoya, Compton City Councilman Isaac Galvan and former San Bernardino County Planning Commissioner Gabriel Chavez. At the time, Tafoya’s attorney, Mark Werksman, indicated the probe was into corruption in the cannabis industry. However, the subpoenas are the first real indication of the investigation’s scope.

Werksman declined to comment on the subpoenas.

In an interview, Baldwin Park Mayor Emmanuel Estrada said he is aware that subpoenas have been issued, but so far investigators have not contacted the city.

Clean-up pledge

Estrada, who became the city’s first new mayor in decades following the election last year, has pledged to clean up Baldwin Park’s cannabis regulations in light of allegations that the process was more favorable to certain companies than others.

“We should be focusing on making this a socially equitable industry and politicians seem to have turned it into a moneymaker for themselves,” he said. “Myself and my newest of colleagues are not involved in any of this. We welcome these external agencies to come to Baldwin Park and solve this issue.”

The Baldwin Park City Council prohibited Tafoya from working on cannabis-related matters earlier this year after the Southern California News Group reported that Tafoya had hired a former recipient of a cannabis license as his assistant city attorney.

A company run by the attorney, Anthony Willoughby II, and his father secured one of the first cannabis permits, then sold the company to a third party that stills operates in the city.

At the time, other cannabis operators raised concerns about a conflict of interest when Willoughby II showed up in their compliance hearings.

Baldwin Park is now contracting with attorney Julia Sylva to review and refine the city’s cannabis regulations. Sylva was chosen specifically because she did not have any connections to cannabis in Baldwin Park or neighboring cities, according to Estrada.

Estrada said he is confident the city will develop fair — and uniform — standards for cannabis businesses.

Past legal entanglements

A lawsuit in 2019 accused Baldwin Park of racketeering for requiring all cannabis businesses to use one company for transportation. The lawsuit alleged representatives of the company, Rukli Inc., threatened to charge up to five times the market rate because the businesses had no alternatives.

Rukli Inc, gave up its exclusivity in March in exchange for other permits allowing the company to cultivate and manufacture cannabis products. The city waived $300,000 in fees as part of the settlement agreement.

In an unrelated lawsuit in September 2020, a former Baldwin Park police lieutenant, who helped regulate the industry, testified that he received complaints of corruption from three cannabis operators, including an allegation that one had been asked to pay “as much as $250,000 cash in a brown paper bag to city officials.”

Then in November, Baldwin Park had to cut ties with one of the cannabis businesses after El Monte police raided the company’s warehouse and found it was growing without a permit. The company had missed years of payments to City Hall and was supposed to be inspected annually.

In January, former Baldwin Park Councilman Ricardo Pacheco pleaded guilty to accepting $37,900 in bribes from an undercover police officer in exchange for voting in favor of a police union contract in 2018. Investigators seized more than $300,000 from Pacheco, including $62,900 buried in his backyard. The U.S. Department of Justice did not publicly reveal the charges against Pacheco, who has agreed to cooperate and testify in other cases for seven months.

It is not clear what investigators are looking at in the other two cities.

El Monte’s cannabis history

El Monte has faced its own share of controversy related to its cannabis licensing. Seven cannabis companies have attempted to persuade a judge to throw out El Monte’s picks for commercial licenses over allegations that the city staff altered the scoring criteria at the last minute to favor applicants making larger donations to the general fund.

Five of the companies alleged their scores were incorrectly tallied or intentionally manipulated. The other two argued their applications were improperly disqualified.

In an interview, El Monte City Manager Alma Martinez said federal authorities have not interviewed or subpoenaed any city staff or council members. She denied the allegations that the scoring process was unfair in any way.

“I was surprised that El Monte was even mentioned,” she said of the federal investigation. “City staff and the City Council followed the process set forth by the ordinance brought by cannabis proponents. We had a third party consultant and we followed their scoring in awarding the licenses.”

Montebello approved 18 cannabis businesses in 2019, and while it has faced some pushback from residents in particular, it hasn’t experienced the same level of turmoil as Baldwin Park or El Monte.

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تعلّم متى ترحل Co-Professor in Faculty of Communication and Media in KAU This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx