DENVER (CN) — A for-profit university on Tuesday asked a 10th Circuit Court of Appeals panel to dismiss a whistleblower suit brought by a former faculty member, arguing most of the accusations of fraud against it were in the press and public knowledge before the lawsuit was filed.
“You have a congressional direction here that these cases shall be dismissed,” argued Michael Raupp, on behalf of Colorado Technical University. “The Supreme Court and this court have determined these cases have a threshold to reach the courts.”
A former faculty member of Colorado Technical University formed Fiorisce LLC to veil her identity and file a qui tam False Claims Act suit on Feb. 25, 2021 to expose the for-profit university's fraudulent billing scheme of reporting to the federal government more credit hours than students actually received.
The False Claims Act allows anyone to sue on behalf of the government to expose fraud against the government.
By employing Intellipath, an adaptive learning software, the university allowed students to easily skip content they already knew to complete classes faster. But the university then submitted the full course credits on financial aid applications. Because the program failed to offer supplemental material or to replace the missed lessons, students were actually getting fewer credit hours than reported.
U.S. Circuit Judge Scott Mattheson, a Barack Obama appointee, lobbed several questions against Raupp, beginning with the court’s jurisdiction to...
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