Here, though, nothing has changed. Inside the house lives a multi-generational, part-Aboriginal family under the care of matriarch Lenore Lutanichi. There is plenty of love, but precious little money. There's no carpet on the concrete floor and not much furniture. Lenore Lutanichi (centre) and her family at their Queensland housing commission house. Credit:Michael Bachelard The children range in age from newborns to early teens. Every adult is on welfare. The adults have all signed up to at least one $18,000 online diploma course. Hamza, who is today representing Victorian training provider Ascet Institute of Technology, came to sign up more. "You can choose four course options: project management, human resource management, business, and leadership management," he said to the crowd gathered on the veranda, his two mates guarding the carload of laptops.

"This is an online course ... you don't have to go to a college; you just stay home and spend maybe two or three hours [on the computer] during the week ... Mostly people complete the course [in] a minimum ... of six or eight months." A car boot full of new laptops ready for delivery for new vocational students. Credit:Michael Bachelard Educators know that genuine diplomas are highly technical and take two years full-time or four years part-time at TAFE to complete. But there is one big reason why so many sign up: the offer of a free computer. Vocational education salesman "Hamza" and his car full of laptops. Credit:Michael Bachelard

"This is an incentive by the government. They are offering laptops, on the spot," Hamza announced. These honeyed words, captured by Fairfax Media on video, are both false and illegal. The July 1 law changes banned the offer of inducements to sell vocational courses. Tasmin Watson, Lenore Lutanichi and other family members. Credit:Michael Bachelard The sharks of the education marketplace, lured by easy profits from government funding, are simply ignoring the law. Ms Lutanichi and her family were first visited around July by "Yashma", who represented Melbourne's Phoenix Institute, which is owned by listed group Australian Careers Network (ACN).

Vocational education salesman Gagandeep Sachdeva with his new Porsche Credit:Facebook She agreed to sign up, excited by a new educational opportunity, and then encouraged her five children and all their partners and ex-partners to do the same. All got their free laptops. But what each was really agreeing to was a big HECS-style debt that they would be required to pay back. A text message sent by saleswoman Yashma to Lenore Lutanichi. The scheme, thanks to agents such as Yashma and Hamza, has exploded in the past 12 months. Driven by a hot-house sales culture, it will cost the taxpayer $4 billion this year.

"It's the most expensive laptop ever," Ms Lutanichi jokes. SMS from saleswoman Yashma to Lutanichi after a Fairfax Media sting Most of that massive diversion of public funds is likely to be wasted. Ms Lutanichi's family, like most new "students", will never get a qualification. But if they get their lives together and earn more than the average salary - currently pegged at just over $54,000 - they will need to repay the loans. After signing 10 people up for courses, Yashma then started using Ms Lutanichi to do grunt work for her, paying $50 for every new person she found. Ms Lutanichi would send tax file numbers and other identifying documents such as Medicare cards via SMS. Fairfax Media has discovered that sales agents employ "scribes" to fill in the necessary forms - often including the English language and numeracy tests - which are supposed to be filled in by students.

Then Yashma asked for even more business, this time for another college, Ascet Institute of Technology - a small Melbourne college that has been registered for 20 years and, until recently, taught mainly cooking courses. Eighteen-year-old Tasmin Watson, Lutanichi's daughter, signed up again. Officially she is studying a business diploma from Phoenix Institute, and a property management diploma at Ascet. She has not read the course material for either - she's too busy improving her poor literacy, trying to finish high school, and being a single mum to baby Sienna. "I haven't started the course yet ... after finding out it was a fraud," she says. "And I don't think I would have done it anyway. But I got a free laptop, so, yeah." Paul Wiggett, 19, Lutanichi's former son-in-law, can barely read or write, but has signed up for a business diploma at Phoenix. Documents also arrived recently, out of the blue, for a "Diploma of Events" from yet another college, Sydney-based AIPE. Mr Wiggett doesn't know how his name was registered for that.

Ms Watson's VET FEE-Help debt for the two courses is $41,000, she thinks. Actually, nobody here is quite sure how much they owe. In the wake of the government's crackdown on inducements, free laptops are now described as a "loan device" - a "learning tool" that must be returned once the course is completed. In tape-recorded confirmation phone calls from the colleges to new students, this is made clear. Phoenix chief executive Ivan Brown said the confirmation calls took place "between 10 and 20 days after the student has applied" to ensure they "cannot be coached or interfered with". He was "comfortable we have sufficient evidence" that students were fully informed.

But Ms Lutanichi says when her family signed up to Phoenix, saleswoman Yashma sat with them all as the confirmation calls came through. She gave "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" signals to make sure they answered correctly. Yashma later taught Ms Lutanichi how to coach new students through the calls. "Please Lenore make sure the clients are in front of you ... so that I am sure they have answered everything correctly," she wrote in one SMS to Ms Lutanichi. "Just make sure your voice is [not] coming in the recording prompting them with any answers." When Hamza was trying to sell Ascet's courses, he dismissed the importance of the confirmation call. Even though the laptops would be described during the call as a loan device, he said, they would never need to be returned.

"It's just a policy statement they'll say over the phone, but nobody is going to ask it back," he said. Fairfax Media believes Hamza was among dozens working for sales agent Gagandeep Sachdeva, though Mr Sachdeva denies it. A Porsche-driving multimillionaire thanks to vocational education, Mr Sachdeva was also a key figure in Phoenix Institute's controversial operation. When Phoenix hit trouble from regulators, he simply moved on. Ascet Institute's chief D'Arcey Kelleher said on Friday his college had only several hundred students, and had recently hired three education sales agents "under trial arrangements". "These arrangements have now ceased," he said. Giving an idea of the size of the recent sales effort, Australian Careers Network's Mr Brown said Phoenix Institute had received 55,000 applications for enrolment from sales agents, of which 23,000 had survived the confirmation process.

Hamza came to Ms Lutanichi's house last week having been promised that 30 more people - including relatives from an Aboriginal mission - would sign up to Ascet's courses. Ms Lutanichi, though, had other ideas. Feeling she and her family had been duped, she instead invited Fairfax Media to come and record events. "For 10 people in my family there is something like $400,000 of debt that I feel responsible for, because I got them to sign up," she said. "Now, that's not fair on my children or me. I feel terrible about that." Yashma's immediate response to the sting was to send an SMS to Ms Lutanichi asking for all the laptops to be returned: "They were a learning tool so now you will have to give them [back] to the college."