- For foreign-born students desperate to stay in the United States, the University of Northern New Jersey seemed like the perfect solution: They did not have to go to class, but they could get coveted student visas and still work at their dream jobs.
They just needed to pay a broker anywhere from $3,000 to $12,000. Over the last three and a half years, more than a thousand agreed.
That was their mistake.
On April 5, the government revealed that the university was a fake — part of an elaborate sting operation that resulted in the arrest of 22 brokers who arranged for students to enroll. These brokers belonged to an underground network of recruiters operating throughout the country who acted as middlemen between students and fraudulent schools known as visa mills, the government said.
Twenty-five students were listed as anonymous co-conspirators, but officials say all of them knew they were committing fraud by not going to class. Within days, 1,076 of them were ordered to appear in immigration court, facing deportation or even a lifetime ban from the United States.