In this series of articles I will publish my Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request steps that are related to my battle against the unvalidated monetary demands that the U.S. Department of Education has been making. These FOIA request related steps are related to Anti-Extortion Case 1. Additional information on Case 1 is also available on this website.
My FOIA request steps contain way too much material for one post. So, I will publish the relevant material in a series of posts. Further, I will add relevant posts, as this journey continues.
This material is also related to what I consider to be extortion and fraud on the behalf of the U.S. Department of Education. Thus, the title. However, I can only provide my opinion in these matters. I am not a legal expert and I cannot determine conclusively from legal standpoint, whether or not extortion and fraud have taken place. So, I will contact relevant institutions in the U.S., and if that will not help, internationally.
Throughout these processes, I will continue to publish relevant materials on this website. If an institution that I contact informs me that it does not agree to my publishing the relevant materials on this website, I will move on and will contact and deal with the next institution.
I came to the U.S. in 1989 as a political refugee from the Soviet Union. I attended state owned Rhode Island College between 1990 and 1996 as an honors student. According to publicly accessible sources the in-state cost of tuition to attend Rhode Island College from 1990 to 1996 ranged from $1,703 to $2,838 a year.
I received Rhode Island College Honors Scholarship, Pell Grant and work-study financial aid that covered my cost of attending Rhode Island College.
As far as I know, as a student I did not qualify for bank loans because I was in the U.S. on a temporary visa when I first attended college, and then on Green Card until graduation, without any credit history, co-signer or collateral. Further, initially I did not have any work experience and work history either. While I was a student my income was extremely low and did not support borrowing from a bank tens of thousands of dollars.
However, the Department of Education insists that I also borrowed $46,354.00 as principal from Fleet National Bank, to which the Department of Education later added interest and fees, so that at this point the Department of Education is demanding from me over $135,000.00.
None of the demands have been validated. There is no validation that I ever received any of the alleged loans either directly, or indirectly, as tuition support. Similarly, there is no validation that any legally binding documents exist.
I have been requesting debt validation from the Department of Education from December of 2011, when I received a student loan collection letter. As a result of this over two years long dispute, it is quite clear, that when we use commonly understood concepts of debt and debt obligations, the debt that the Department of Education is requesting from me simply does not exist. Because the debt does not exist, the Department of Education cannot validate it. After all, how can you validate existence of something that does not exist?
So, the Department of Education is trying to redefine, at its convenience, what constitutes debt and debt obligations, what are legally binding promissory notes, and what are legally binding contracts.
Obviously, I do not agree with that. Without relevant legal rights, neither institutions nor individuals can define, at their convenience, who owes them money, and make threats in order to force others to make them monetary payments.
Further, I believe that making unvalidated monetary demands may produce short-term benefits, but cannot be part of a constructive long-term operating method for any company or organization.
FOIA request results can help to clarify and specify what documents do and do not exist. This, in turn, can help to support my argument, that the Department of Education does not have any legally acceptable basis for making monetary demands and threats in this case.
After failed attempts to get validation on the right to make monetary demands and relevant information from the U.S. Department of Education, on 04/28/14 I contacted Office of General Counsel, Office of Special Counsel. Couple of weeks later I received an intelligent, well-written response from Attorney Advisor Pamela Stone at the Office of General Counsel. She advised me, that the primary mission of the Office of Special Counsel is to safeguard the merit system by protecting federal employees and applicants from prohibited personnel practices, especially reprisal for whistleblowing. Further, she recommended contacting Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) regarding my FOIA dispute.
On 05/19/14 I sent OGIS a full track record of my FOIA request related materials so far (USPS Delivery Confirmation EM746183131US). At the time of writing this post, I am waiting for a response.
Given, that my dispute with the U.S. Department of Education continues, next I will contact the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI.
As I stated above, I believe that the U.S. Department of Education has been engaging in fraud and extortion.
Namely, in 2012 the U.S. Department of Education sent me what it claimed to be copies of my original Notice of Loan Guarantee and Disclosure Statements. However, it turned out that these statements were generated in 2012 by entering my current information into a computer system. I graduated from college in 1996. So, I consider this to be an act of fraud, and I would like to know what other institutions think of this.
Similarly, I consider the U.S. Department of Education’s practices of making unvalidated monetary demands in a coercive manner to be extortion, and I would like to know what other institutions think of this.
If the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI cannot investigate this case, perhaps they can recommend other institutions whom I can contact for help. As I stated above, if an institution that I contact does not accept my handling this case in writing and my publishing the relevant materials on this website, I will simply move on and will deal with other institutions.
If I cannot close this case through finding assistance in the U.S., I will contact relevant institutions internationally.
I will most certainly also contact political candidates and different organizations during the next presidential election cycle. Here are couple of questions that I will ask:
Of course, all of this will take years of work. However, I am confident that eventually I will prevail.
I don’t believe that justice has disappeared from this world, simply because the U.S. Department of Education is engaging in questionable practices.
ATTN: FOIA Officer
U.S. Department of Education
Office of the Chief Information Officer
Regulatory Information Management Services
400 Maryland Avenue S.W., PCP 9142
Washington, DC 20202-4700
Dear Sir or Madam,
This is a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act, 5 USC 552, as amended, and the Privacy Act of 1974, 5 USC 552a, as amended.
In accordance with the instructions that I received from Naomi Randolph, Special Assistant, Operations Services, Federal Student Aid, I am requesting copies of signed documents that validate my receipt of grants and/or student loans in the past.
Further, I am requesting information on insurance payments that Rhode Island Higher Education Assistance Authority allegedly made to Fleet National Bank on my behalf in 1997.
In addition, given that you have the relevant information or are able to obtain the relevant information, I am requesting information on the total cost of my attending Rhode Island College from 1990 to 1996.
Please see the attached letter from Naomi Randolph for additional information.
Please note that this is an open letter that I will publish on the Internet, on StopExtortion.org so that it is accessible to the general public and to other institutions.
I am thereby requesting copies of the following documents:
I came to the U.S. (and to Rhode Island) in 1989, and attended Rhode Island College from 1990-1996. I wanted to go to college and filled in the financial aid applications as instructed and signed the Promissory Note portions in the process. To the best of my knowledge, these financial aid applications were used for processing grants, and to the best of my knowledge I did receive grants as a student. Further, to the best of my knowledge the amounts of grants exceeded the cost of tuition and fees for every school year. Among others, I received Rhode Island College Honors Grants and Pell Grant.
As a student I did not qualify for loans because I was in the U.S. on a temporary visa as a political refugee when I first attended school, and then on Green Card, without any credit history, co-signer or collateral in the U.S. Further, initially I did not have any U.S. work experience and work history either. The construction, house repairs and renovation work that I occasionally did helped to cover the living expenses which I kept extremely low, but did not help me to build income or work history that would have supported borrowing from a bank while I was a student.
According to the publicly available information, Rhode Island College in-state tuition from 1990–1995 ranged from $1,703 to $2,838 (1995-1996 being the last school year I attended this college). Please see: http://www.collegecalc.org/colleges/rhode-island/rhode-island-colle...
In December of 2011, I received a student loan collection letter from one of Department of Education’s business partner-collection agency demanding $134,497.84.
I have been requesting debt validation from December of 2011, that is, for over a year and a half.
So far I have received Notice of Loan Guarantee and Disclosure Statements that were produced by the guaranty agency just recently and apparently without having any actual loan contracts. This demonstrates that the guaranty agency can manufacture documents at will. This, of course, does not validate existence of any debt.
Further, I have received one sided copies of partially filled in financial aid applications, the Application and Promissory Note documents. I have also received separate copies of what are supposed to be the back ends of these documents. However, as is stated above, these separate back ends of the copies do not contain any identifying information whatsoever that links these back ends with the front ends. So, there is no way to authenticate these documents, and I do not know where the copies of the back ends of these documents came from. They may equally well belong to any one or more other persons student loan applications.
Further, the guaranty agency, which seems to be the source of these documents, has already demonstrated that it can manufacture legal documents at will, without having any loan contracts. Accordingly, I do not have any faith in the integrity of the statements made by this guaranty agency, or in the documents that are not exact copies of the original documents.
Accordingly, I most definitely do not accept the unidentifiable separate back ends as parts of the same Application and Promissory Note document.
Further, filling in and signing financial aid applications does not create debt. Lending and borrowing transactions create debt. Accordingly, I maintain that without both lending and borrowing transactions there is no student loan debt. (Lending without borrowing indicates that the applicant did not receive or accept the loans, and borrowing without lending is an act of theft.)
Further, the Department of Education, in instances when it claims that it has taken over the promissory notes, is also subject to any defenses that the student/obligee may assert against the assignor/lender
Please note that the above citation is applicable to the time period the loans were made.
Accordingly, I expect the Department of Education to validate the debt and to demonstrate via usage of signed documents that the lender did lend and I did borrow the money that you demand from me as student loans.
As is stated above, the same financial aid documents whose front end copies the Department of Education sent me, also contain the financial aid amounts that were filled in by the people who processed these applications. These financial aid amounts exceeded the cost of tuition for every school year that I attended Rhode Island College (1990-1996). For example, for 1990-91 school year the estimated financial aid amount was $3,300, versus $1,703 tuition for the 1990-91 school year. Similarly, financial aid amounts exceeded the tuition for other school years as well.
Further, year after year, on most of the financial aid application copies the To Be Completed by the Lender section contains a lender’s stamp, Lender Code, phone number, and in the Loan Amount Approved box the amount of $0.00 (zero dollars), and empty spaces in the Interest Rate part and the Fee part.
Thus, until proven otherwise, as I have stated before and as I can conclude from the existing evidence, the financial aid applications that I signed and submitted were used for processing grants, but the loans were not approved.
Accordingly, I will appreciate your sending me copies of any original documents that you can provide that conclusively demonstrate
(1) the total cost of tuition and fees relevant to my attending Rhode Island College,
(2) lending and borrowing transactions that resulted in my receipt of student loans either directly or indirectly, as tuition support,
(3) my receipt of grants while I attended Rhode Island College.
If your office does not have information belonging to one or more of these categories, please state so.
Please provide copies of such documents by 08/15/13. If you cannot accommodate this deadline, please inform me in writing by 08/15/13 by what date you will send me copies of the requested documents.
Thank you in advance for your help,
If you find the information on this website useful, please link to www.StopExtortion.org
Your linking to this website can help other people to find it and, thus, can benefit people.
Thank you in advance for your help!
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