BRIDGEPORT — Stone Academy and its owner, Mark Scheinberg, have agreed to pay more than $1 million to resolve a case where they are alleged to have violated the federal False Claims Act by making money order payments on behalf of 102 students to keep them from defaulting on their student loans.
Scheinberg and the academy, which has campuses in East Hartford, Waterbury and West Haven and awards career diplomas in various medical fields, made the payments because high default rates would have placed the for-profit school at risk of losing out on access to several federal programs, according to the U.S. Department of Justice District of Connecticut.
“This settlement resolves allegations that, between February 2015 and March 2019, Scheinberg and Stone Academy mailed 154 small, direct payments to loan servicers on behalf of 102 students in attempts to prevent those students from defaulting on their loans,” the department said in a statement Friday. “The payments were made with money orders purchased and filled out by Scheinberg without the students’ knowledge or consent, and in a manner intended to conceal the fact that these payments were made by Scheinberg and Stone Academy.
As part of the agreement, Scheinberg will divest ownership of Stone Academy and Creative Workforce LLC, which does business as Paier College of Art. Scheinberg also agreed to retire from Goodwin University and the University of Bridgeport. Scheinberg, in his role as president of Goodwin, was also a...
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