Students charged with bilking schools of thousands in tuition scam

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA - A ring of con-artists posing as part-time students took advantage of a ``student-friendly&#39;&#39; tuition refund policy at Temple University to bilk the school out of $76,000, federal authorities charged Friday. <br> <br> The eight suspects, including one from Georgia, are accused of enrolling in classes at Temple using phony names and Social Security numbers, then intentionally overpaying their tuition but with bad checks they knew would eventually bounce. <br> <br> The school then refunded the overpayments before realizing that the checks were drawing on empty bank accounts. <br> <br> Participants in the scheme cashed the refunds, and in most cases withdrew from the school before taking any classes, prosecutors said. <br> <br> ``This was a deliberate scheme to take advantage of a student-friendly university,&#39;&#39; U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan said. <br> <br> Between 1996 and 1998, the accused passed about $94,000 in bad checks at Temple, prosecutors said. One, Grady McCrary, 33, of Stone Mountain, Ga., is also accused of obtaining $22,775 in federally funded student loans that were never repaid. <br> <br> Meehan said McCrary, who had previously attended Temple, was the ringleader and appeared to be perfecting the scheme so they could implement it at other schools. <br> <br> After finding initial success in Philadelphia at Temple, prosecutors said the suspects also enrolled at the University of Maryland and the DeVry Institute of Technology in Decatur, Ga., and began passing bad tuition checks there as well. <br> <br> The alleged scheme was uncovered when Temple officials noticed a new round of applications and tuition checks for a particular continuing-education class and became suspicious, according to Temple&#39;s head of security, Carl Bittenbender. <br> <br> Two of the suspects, Tasha Gordon, 34, of Egg Harbor, N.J., and Shonda Feggins, 34, of Philadelphia, surrendered to authorities and were ordered released Friday pending trial. A third, Carlton McCrary, 26, was in federal custody on an unrelated drug charge in Wilmington, Del. Grady McCrary surrendered Friday afternoon and is to be arraigned on Tuesday. <br> <br> FBI agents were still looking for four other suspects. All eight suspects face federal charges of mail fraud, bank fraud and using false Social Security numbers to defraud. <br> <br> Temple has since changed its refund policies, Bittenbender said. Formerly, students who were overcharged or who overpaid their tuition bill were given a refund within seven business days. Now they have to wait a week longer until the university can verify that their original check cleared, he said. <br> <br> ``It is unfortunate. It will inconvenience some students,&#39;&#39; Bittenbender said. ``An extra seven days may not sound like a lot, but to students who don&#39;t have a lot of money and have overpaid tuition, it could be a problem.&#39;&#39;