Pioneer Pacific College Stole student loan money no refund fake grades and certificates Clackamas, Oregon

I just started graduate school, and I remember coming across information about loan discharges for this type of situation when I was researching Federal financial aid:

(http://studentaid.ed.gov/PORTALSWebApp/students/english/discharges.jsp?tab=repaying)
(https://www.dl.ed.gov/borrower/OtherFormList.do?cmd=doViewRequirements&wizardName=Unpaid%20Refund%20Discharge)

If your son had a Stafford loan and withdrew, the loan can be discharged if the school didn't refund the lender. Parent PLUS loans can also be discharged this way. Stafford loans are usually through a private lender (such as Sallie Mae or Citibank) or directly from the Department of Education (called a direct loan). Find out who the lender is and call their customer service line to explain what happened, and make sure you state that the school is not willing to discuss the situation with you. Typically for a discharge, you need a something in writing from the school confirming withdrawal (which any reputable school would give a departing student) but there are alternate procedures in place if the school did not or will not provide this (which I'm assuming is the case here.) You may need to provide documentation to prove that your son was doing something other than being a full-time student - if he was employed full-time, pay-stubs may be very helpful. If the lender denies the discharge, you could also sue the school, it might well be worth the cost of hiring a lawyer, depending on how much his loan was for.

Irregardless of whether the loan is discharged or not, you should file a report with the Department of Education (http://www.ombudsman.ed.gov/), because falsifying grades and student records to fraudulently obtain federal financial aid money is illegal. I'd also complain to the school's accrediting agency: the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (http://www.acics.org/).

Most proprietary career schools like PPC are run as for-profit business ventures, and with that in mind, they are more concerned about their profits and investors than about the best educational experience for their students. Because of this, many for-profit institutions, including some of the larger ones such as the University of Phoenix and ITT Technical Institute have engaged in some shady financial aid practices to milk as much as they can from the federal aid programs, frequently at the expense of the student. UoP was actually fined several millions of dollars by the DoE for a set of similar incidents. I hope this information is helpful and I wish you all the best with getting this resolved.