ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – An Apopka man was arrested during the recent bust of a nationwide scheme targeting veteran students, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
In a release on Thursday, USAO officials said that the man — identified as Kyle Blake Kotecha, 38 — had already signed a plea agreement for his role in the conspiracy.
Recommended Videos
Alongside him, five others were taken into custody and indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and ten counts of wire fraud, the release states. They were identified as follows:
- Zachary Hiscock, 41 — Arizona
- Timothy Slater, 66 — Illinois
- Nikhil Patel, 48 — Missouri
- Gangadhar Bathula, 59 — Virginia
- Arif Sayed, 54 — California
According to investigators, these five suspects operated for-profit, non-college degree schools across the U.S., which claimed to provide cybersecurity and computer coding courses that were approved to receive GI Bill benefits.
[EXCLUSIVE: Become a News 6 Insider (it’s FREE) | PINIT! Share your photos]
“VA regulations prohibit schools that receive GI Bill benefits from compensating individuals who recruit and enroll veteran students with a portion of the tuition they secure,” the release reads.
But despite the ban, the five suspects hired Kotecha to target and recruit veteran students to attend their schools, paying Kotecha around 25% of the benefits the schools obtained through these enrolled veteran students, USAO officials explained.
In addition, the suspects tried to conceal the nature of the recruitment scheme from VA auditors using tricks like coded terms, concealed payments, falsified contracts and phony enrollment records, the release claims.
“Kotecha’s recruitment scheme was successful and pumped millions of dollars of GI Bill benefits into schools that had previously received little to none,” the USAO announced. “The schools charged veterans tuition at or near the annual cap of $24,000 for instruction that lasted only 8-13 weeks.”
Now, the schools have been charged with forfeiting around $19.2 billion of GI Bill benefits that were acquired as a result of the conspiracy, investigators said. Meanwhile, Kotecha agreed to forfeit nearly $4 million to the U.S. as an estimate of the amount he personally received from the scheme.
“These charges serve as a stark warning to those who would defraud the Post-9/11 GI Bill education benefits program,” Special Agent in Charge David Spilker said.