Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, visa mill “universities” have been a popular way for the criminal entrepreneur to make piles of money from gullible or nefarious foreigners looking to break in to the American economy. The rip-off consists of selling fake educations to colleges with sketchy or nonexistent accreditation to foreigners so they can acquire student visas to worm their way into the US. (See my 2011 examination of these immigrant-focused schemes: Visa Mills Scam Profitably in Silicon Valley .)

Another likely visa mill was Oakland’s Oikos University, the site of a mass shooting in 2012 where an unhappy immigrant murdered seven. The school offered studies to an F-1 visa clientele in bible studies, music and vocational nursing.

One of the more notorious visa mills has been Pleasanton’s Tri-Valley University. The President of TVU was a Chinese woman, Susan Xiao-Ping Su (pictured), who made over $5 million during her tenure, quite a trick when you consider the school was founded in 2008 and shut down by the authorities in 2011. Authorities may have figured out the school was a scam when students were “scattered across the country” in convenience store jobs and such (‘Sham’ University Case One of Biggest, Official Says, Pleasanton Patch, May 4, 2011).

For some diversity fun, you can see the sentencing story explained in a foreign language, perhaps Telegu, at this link, showing interest in TVU’s fate extends far beyond English-speaking California.