The student sting: the troubling inside story of Ice’s fake university | US news

Ramesh used to talk to his friends in Michigan a lot on the phone.

Usually it was about applications to the University of Farmington, the school where they worked and where he recruited students to attend. But they would also talk about their lunches, cars and Ramesh’s unsuccessful job search.

Farmington provided international students who had finished their studies at other schools with the documents needed to maintain their student visas, without making them go to classes – also known as a visa mill.

The school also gave those papers to Ramesh, whose tuition bill was erased after he recruited a certain number of students. When he brought in more students, he got a portion of the profit. In return, students received the documentation they needed to stay in the US.

For 17 months, Ramesh thought that he and the other Farmington employees were in on the scheme together. He was wrong.

On 29 January 2019, he and seven other recruiters were arrested in Michigan, where they had been summoned for a meeting about the school.

Ramesh knew he had been doing illegal things. What he didn’t know is he had been doing them under the supervision of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (Ice’s) secretive investigative wing, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), which had created the school.

The so-called “Operation Paper Chase” became public when an indictment was unsealed on 30 January 2019. Headlines blared with the news of a fake Ice university and hundreds of students scrambled to respond to deportation orders.

Ramesh, who returned to his home country of India in February after spending 13 months in prison, shared hundreds of case documents and more than 17 hours of audio recordings with the Guardian, providing a detailed look at the sting operation. His real name is not being used out of concerns about finding work.

“This school doesn’t have any classes, no curriculum, no professors, intentionally,” Ramesh told the Guardian. “Intentionally I joined this school because I don’t have any money to pay for some other college.”

The 29-year-old said he understood why the government deported him, but he could not understand why he was encouraged to recruit students to the fake university.

“I feel very bad because they trusted me, they must have trusted me,” he said. “I feel really bad, that must have been a very painful situation.”

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Ramesh wants to be able to afford nice watches and cars, but he is not a criminal mastermind.

He entered the US legally in February 2015 to attend school in California, where he received a master’s in computer science.

After graduating, he enrolled in another school to maintain his student visa. But the school lost its accreditation shortly after he enrolled, imperiling his visa and leaving him short on cash because he said he was not refunded the $25,000 tuition.

A friend then recommended Farmington and he enrolled in September 2017.

Farmington appeared to have accreditation and was listed on the US state department website. Its own website and documents said it was a federally recognized university.

It was also appealing because Ramesh could get his tuition waived by recruiting students.

It was a good – and illegal – arrangement for him which became even better – and more illegal – when he started to make money by recruiting students.

Two of his main contacts in this scheme were Ali Milani, the school’s president, and Carey Ferrante, a staff member. They had hundreds of calls and were in contact on email and Facebook. Both were undercover agents and their aliases are used in place of their real names throughout the story.

Their calls were first and foremost about checking in on applications for would-be students, sorting out payments and determining how many more students they could accept.

Occasionally, they were simply friendly.

On 24 May 2018, Ramesh tells Milani: “I just wanted to check in on your wellbeing, that’s it.” Thirty seconds later, the call is over.

And in one bizarre call, the pair arrange to get a fake college transcript for a US citizen.

The citizen contacted them because he was in love with a woman whose parents didn’t approve of him because he didn’t have a college education. The man is hoping for a transcript to show the woman’s parents he has a degree.

Milani says: “We’ll bill him sometime early next week and then we’ll send it out to him once he pays.”

Despite their seeming partnership, only Ramesh was charged with conspiracy to commit visa fraud and harbor aliens for profit. The government…