The mastermind of a $24 million scheme to take advantage of veterans and active duty military will spend 5 years in jail after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Ed4Mil President David Alvey was criminally charged after a whistleblower suit filed by James Hoyer client Adam Boyce.
Alvey conspired with former Assistant Dean of Caldwell College Lisa DiBisceglie and former Ed4Mil employee Helen Sechrist to trick members of the military into signing up for wildly overpriced online classes that were misrepresented as Caldwell classes. In reality, they were cheap certificate courses offered by an unaccredited school. DiBisceglie and Sechrist also plead guilty. g
Whistleblower & James Hoyer client Adam Boyce
Boyce first came forward to the government after concerns that Army National Guard members were being subjected to a bait and switch for online certificate courses, that were marked up in cost by 6-times and more when sold to military personnel.
Boyce was marketing director for a middleman company called Ed4Mil which recruited soldiers to take the online classes. National Guard members were told the classes were offered by a private school in New Jersey, just outside of New York City, called Caldwell College, but they were actually provided by another online school called Penn Foster. CBS News reported on the whistleblower complaint when Boyce’s False Claims Act suit was unsealed in 2014.
