Apparently this is one of several cases of this particular scam being investigated in Columbus, Ohio because we posted on another one, here, back in February.
From the Norwalk Reflector (Hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’). Emphasis is mine:
A Somali man who ran a scam tutoring company for needy Franklin County students was sentenced to 13 months in prison Thursday on federal charges of falsifying invoices and stealing students’ identities.
Ashkir Ali, 46, of Balsam Lake Drive on the East Side, pleaded guilty in November to the charges. He faced as many as seven years in prison.
“I’m not coming back here,” Ali told U.S. District Judge Edmund A. Sargus Jr. “I’ve learned my lesson.”
Sargus ordered Ali to pay $115,916 in restitution and to serve 13 months in a federal prison and five months in a half-way house. He said a mandatory two-year prison sentence for identity theft was reduced because of Ali’s “substantial assistance” in investigating tutoring fraud.
Ali was indicted more than a year ago after a two-year investigation of his company, WAISS Network Technologies, by the Ohio auditor’s office.
The probe revealed that WAISS made $100,000 from Columbus and $20,000 from South-Western city schools as part of the federal “supplemental educational services” tutoring program, mandated by the No Child Left Behind law.
The other day I mentioned that there is beginning to be some reporting by the mainstream media about the refugee program in negative news about refugees. A few years ago there would not have been a line like the next one in a crime report, while fluffy puffy feel-good stories would always mention the ‘r’ word.
Ali came to the United States in 1997 as a political refugee and is a permanent U.S. resident, Sargus said. He could be deported to Somalia after his prison term because he has been convicted of an aggravated felony, according to his plea agreement.
He won’t be deported, not the way things are going now with ICE (see Senator Sessions).
By the way, Columbus is right behind Minneapolis with its rapidly expanding Somali population.