A Pennsylvania couple is under investigation for pocketing thousands of dollars and mistreating Korean students enrolled in an exchange program they operate:
An American couple is charged with diverting more than $100,000 and mistreating Korean middle and high school students enrolled in a foreign exchange student program that they operate.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett said the state is seeking to freeze the assets of Timothy H. and Tina Sweet of Allentown, who ran United Student Exchange. Authorities have prohibited the couple from bringing in additional students for the next school year. Corbett’s office reportedly handed over to Lehigh County records crucial to the case.
Prosecutors said the Sweets advertised the placement of exchange students in Christian communities with promises of carefully selected host families and placement at private schools.
The program is believed to have 56 students from grades eight to 12, primarily from Korea. Fifty-four of the students are enrolled in Allentown private schools, while the remaining two are attending schools in Kansas and Ohio.
Lovely folk these two are:
United Student Exchange did not line up host families ahead of time for some students, and ended up shuffling some around to temporary homes until placement could be found, he said.
The company also did not do background checks on some host families. It did not provide students promised free trips to other parts of the United States during their stay here, he said.
One school official who dealt with the company likened it to a “human puppy mill,” Frederiksen said.
One Korean student complained that the couple fed them month-old food (which made them sick), and made them live in a leaky basement with no air conditioning.
The couple, however, claim it’s all the Korean broker’s fault:
It wasn’t that we took it, it wasn’t that we stole it. I was doing it because I was investing in our company.
Tina and Tim Sweet say a bad business deal led Pennsylvania’s Attorney General to file a civil suit against their company, United Student Exchange.
Tina says she diverted money paid by her independent students to cover the expenses of United’s Korean exchange student broker, Edwin Hong. Hong is cooperating with the A.G’s office.
TINA SWEET: The money I wasn’t paid for I can’t pay back. But the money I was paid for that I did use to rob peter to pay paul the money I did use for that I need to put back.
Positively hagwon-esque!
11 Comments
Scheming “christians”- that’s never happened before!
dunno man…those teensy-flabby arms are sexy to me. they say Hey Fellas, I’m Fertile. skin-wrapped bones are no fun to tussle.
Hey, let’s not go too hard on this couple.
Maybe they have “had hard lives and we should understand them”!
Back home I knew some Koreans college students who signed up for a semester-long work abroad program. They were to come and work for a semester at a ski resort or hotel, and then get a month off for travel. When they arrived they were placed in two McDonald’s restaurants in suburban Pittsburgh. Three lived in a one-bedroom apartment in the northern suburbs, and four lived in the southern suburbs. Thing is, the McDonald’s owner knew she was getting Korean college students for a semester, via an American-based program. The students, though, had signed up with the program through a Korean agent with the intention of working in the tourist industry (resort or hotel) in order to practice their English.
The study- and work-abroad racket seems pretty shady, from both the American and Korean end.
Anyone who shells out the cash to homestay in Allentown, Pennsylvania deserves getting fleeced IMO.
I have experienced just as bad conditions in Korea and have seen much worse in that the way foreign English teachers are treated. The only difference is, the Korean student abroad can sue, but foreign teachers just get threatened and kicked out of the country.
Brian, the ESL business is just as corrupt here as it ever was in Korea. I worked for a “school” here in Vancouver that was also peddling “internships” when in fact they were providing cheap labour to resorts all over British Columbia and Alberta.
I know of filthy “homestays” that charge $1200 a month to live in cubicle in a dirty house with 11 bedrooms.
The real culprit, however, is parents willing to send their kids, alone, to Canada or the USA without checking it out for themselves first. I would never do such a thing my kids.
# 7,
I dated a girl once who actually went to high school in Kansas on a similar arrangement. She had a very good experence and still kepts in touch with her sponsor family. Thus, this situation has seen success in an number of occasions so I wouldn’t blanketly condemn all parents that think about doing this.
I actually stayed at their house a few times. I am not a Koran student,but I do go to the school that the Korans who were brought here by them go to. I have seen the living conditions and it is pretty bad. There was like tons of Korans stuck down in the basement. It was a mess. The poor Koran girls didnt have a mirror. Also, there was a time when they picked up two Koran girls and they had to stay in a hotel for like two days until a host family could be found to take them in.
That’s nothing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q.....sy_of_2005
It is interesting to read the comments about Tim and Tina Sweet. As a person who has first hand information on what happened while many students were in their care and ultimately disbursed to host families, it is truely amazing that they were not “caught” sooner. It was not due to lack of trying to report them. These issues were reported to the Department of State on a regular basis! Initially Tim and Tina were part of the organization USA which was/is owned by Moacir Rodriguez of Texas. Students were shuffled in to Texas and in many cases put in hotels for weeks at a time until host families could be identified. Can you imagine what unchaporoned children do to pass the time? I have pictures which I obtained from one student that clearly shows this. As a host family we were never checked at all. In fact, we met Tina at a garage sale, she followed us to our home, she verified that we had a bedroom, and then asked if she could bring the student over now! At one point Tim and Tina held a students personal belongings hostage after the student was returned to Korea. Only after several weeks of negotiations, after going to the Sweets house with the police after receiving a notarized document to act on the students behalf to collect his belongings, was I finally able to get the returned students personal items. Guess what…. Tim and Tina had turned them over to a third party for “safe keeping”. I could go on an on about personal insights of what was going on to include the appalling living conditions. Bottom line, if the PA Attorney General needs more info have them contact me directly!