Whistleblower: Mitchell Broadstock. Credit:James Brickwood Mr Broadstock decided to speak out to stop other vulnerable young people from both recruiting and being recruited into Australia's scandal-ridden private college industry, which is reliant on federal government student loans, worth up to $4 billion this year. On Wednesday, NSW Minister for Family and Community Services, Brad Hazzard, warned "shyster training colleges" were targeting the foster care system. He has directed the department to warn thousands of carers across the state about the threat. For Mr Broadstock it is personal. He has spent almost his entire life in foster care and dropped out of school at 14. When he started his new job, the formula was simple: target people like himself.

"I would just sit in Centrelink up the road and talk to people while they waited. I'd say I'm lucky, I've just changed my life. I would bring them back down to the stand and sign them up," he said. "I was going to use my story to leverage every single kid into debt," he said. Within weeks he had also signed up his own pregnant girlfriend and his estranged mother to courses, at the cost of up to $22,000 in Commonwealth debt each. "If you got so many students in a month you could win a car, that just got me really excited. A $50,000 salary, with bonuses, I just couldn't turn it down. "Now I feel sick to my stomach."

Most of Mr Broadstock's fellow sales agents at the company he worked for were from similar backgrounds, he said. "They get signed up to a course, and then if they refer a couple of family members or friends, they get offered a job. It is their second chance at life. Most have been in a downward spiral. You take a $55,000-a-year salary hands down." In April, Mr Broadstock wanted to try his luck in western NSW. He was too late. Many potential students in the state's poorest areas had already got their laptops in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars worth of taxpayer debt . "Everywhere was just milked, Glen Innes, Bourke, Dubbo, Tamworth."

Mr Broadstock is still technically employed by the multinational company that provides courses in business, design and beauty. It cannot be named because he has signed a non-disclosure agreement. Mr Broadstock said colleges still hand out laptops, but only after a student had registered their interest and they were "on loan" for the duration of the course. The practice will become illegal from January 1. He said the federal government's recent crackdown had resulted in colleges attempting to sign up students on a much larger scale before new legislation comes into effect on New Year's Day, a sentiment supported by NSW Fair Trading. "It is likely that dishonest providers may be extra active in attempting to sign up as many young people as possible before the new legislation is in place," a statement said last week. On Wednesday Mr Hazzard warned "Shyster training colleges [need] to stop ripping off vulnerable children in foster care or who have just exited foster care.

"It is one more savage attack by organisations that appear to have no morals." Relationships Australia manager, Bernard Brown, who assists young adults who have come out of foster care, said that Mr Broadstock was just the tip of the iceberg. "There are hundreds kids that we are in touch with across the network. It makes us so angry." He urged students who had been affected by private college debts to make a complaint to Fair Trading and the ACCC "so they can go after these cowboys".