In the fall of 2013 Jun Shen allegedly sent an email to officials at the brand-new University of Northern New Jersey offering her services as a recruiting agent for foreign students. According to the federal criminal complaint against her, Shen, a Chinese national and U.S. permanent resident who owned an international student consulting company in Levittown, N.Y., subsequently left a recorded message for UNNJ officials saying she had at least 50 students ready to transfer to the institution.
Between November of 2013 and March 2016 — right before federal prosecutors announced that UNNJ was a fake university set up by the government as part of an elaborate sting operation — Shen allegedly recruited approximately 150 foreign individuals to UNNJ despite knowing that they would not be attending classes. For her recruiting services Shen received a percentage of the “tuition” her clients paid: the criminal complaint estimates that Shen earned a total $164,775 in commission payments.
The tuition Shen’s recruits forked over didn’t pay for classes. UNNJ didn’t offer any. Nor did it employ any faculty. The university was nothing more than a website and storefront offices staffed with undercover agents posing as school administrators.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/05/24/sting-operation-involving-sham-college-led-21-arrests
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