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Tamara Brown, 58, of Haddon Heights, began submitting false information to keep her Divers Academy International just outside of Philadelphia accredited beginning in 2012, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said.
As a for-profit institution, the diving school required accreditation to be eligible to receive tuition funds from the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, he said.
The process also helps evaluate the eligibility of veteran students to receive the aid, she said.
“Given that more than 80 percent of the diving school’s students received financial assistance from the [U.S.] Department of Education, the school stood to lose its largest source of tuition funding for its students if it lost its accreditation,” the U.S. attorney said.
Brown, the academy president and CEO, reported rates of employment of the school’s graduates of 81-84%, when the employment rates were closer to 50-60%, “significantly lower than the rate required to maintain accreditation,” according to an FBI complaint on file in U.S. District Court in Camden.
Brown also lied about required “advisory board” meetings that are designed to ensure that the curriculum meets the current demands of the industry and prospective employers, it says.
Brown reported advisory board meetings on various dates “and also submitted what purported to be minutes of nine such board meetings,” when, in fact, the school “did not have a formal advisory board and did not regularly conduct meetings as required,” according to the complaint.
Brown “submitted wholly fabricated meeting minutes for at least six of the nine dates listed in the school’s accreditation application and, therefore, did not satisfy the minimum accreditation requirements,” the complaint says.
Certified divers can get work in oil, electricity and nuclear energy, or civil engineering jobs inspecting, repairing and maintaining bridges, dams, tunnels, and other underwater structures, as well as in communications laying underwater cables.
Brown, who’s a member of the Women Divers Hall of Fame, followed in her parents’ footsteps, beginning as an instructor and then becoming a director at their Divers Academy of the Eastern Seaboard on the Delaware River.
She bought the business in 2006, became president and CEO, and renamed the school Divers Academy International, according to the company website.
Brown then bought a 40-acre, 60-foot-deep quarry and surrounding property in Erial, NJ, and created what she called a state-of-the-art education and training facility just north of Atlantic City.
Rather than go to trial, Brown took a deal from the government, pleading guilty to wire fraud last April.
She'll have to serve just about all of the sentence becauset ehere's no parole in the federal prison system. U.S. District Judge Joseph H. Rodriguez also sentenced Brown to three years of supervised release, fined her $50,000 and ordered restitution of $1.1 million.
Sellinger credited agents of the FBI’s South Jersey Resident Agency in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Resident Agency of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General and the Northeast Field Office of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General with the investigation leading to the plea and sentence, secured by Assistant U.S. Attorney Diana Vondra Carrig of his Camden office.
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