Ex-Vocational School Owner Gets 5-Year Prison Term in Loan Fraud

The former owner of a San Fernando vocational school was sentenced to five years in federal prison for fraudulently collecting more than half a million dollars in student loans, authorities said Friday.

Richard R. Romero, 49, of Rancho Palos Verdes, who was co-owner of the now-defunct Medical Training Institute, was also ordered to pay $557,500 in restitution to the U.S. Department of Education for submitting 225 phony student loan applications between 1982 and 1984, Assistant U.S. Atty. Stephen A. Mansfield said. The other owner was not charged.

In a plea agreement, the federal government dismissed one conspiracy charge and two other fraud charges against Romero in exchange for his guilty plea to two felony fraud charges, Mansfield said. In addition to incarceration and restitution, he was sentenced to three years probation upon release from prison.

Romero, who ran the San Fernando school and another with the same name in Bellflower, solicited signatures on blank student loan applications from poor people standing in welfare lines, on street corners and outside churches, Mansfield said.

“He would find folks who were down on their luck and get them to sign blank government loan applications,” Mansfield said. “He would give them a song and dance about how they could work in a medical office. And these were people that actually needed an education and a job.”

Never Attended School

About half of those who signed the documents never attended school, Mansfield said. Romero fraudulently filled out loan applications in their names and endorsed and cashed their loan checks, he said.

The school, which was on North Maclay Avenue, was accredited by the Department of Education to receive federal and state student loan money. But the Bellflower school was not, said Deputy Federal Public Defender Dennis J. Landin, Romero’s attorney.

Romero fraudulently filled out applications stating that students who were attending the Bellflower school were enrolled in the accredited San Fernando school, Landin said.

He said Romero, who was deputy director of student financial aid at Cal State Fullerton from 1970 to 1973, never personally recruited students in welfare lines, but hired others to do so.

The money was used to operate the schools and not to personally enrich Romero, Landis said, adding that “no one ever said he used it to buy Cadillacs and fur coats.”

The Department of Education began investigating Romero and the schools in 1984 after receiving student complaints about poor educational offerings and the lack of job placement. In the two years that the schools operated, 239 students attended the San Fernando school and 225 went to the Bellflower school. It is not known how many actually found jobs as medical assistants.