Almeda University Employee Expose Fake Program.
Emily Gardner (not her real name), who worked for the
company during two weeks in February as an office temp,
says the operation astonished her. During her first day on
the job, office managers explained that Blue Pearl was an
Internet fulfillment company that processed work for other
companies.
“They said they had other customers, but the only orders I
ever saw were from Almeda College and University,” Gardner
recalls. She and another temp worker were asked to come up
with aliases to use whenever they walked into or phoned
the office. (Gardner asked for anonymity because she is
looking for work and fears legitimate employers won’t hire
her.) She also received a brief orientation in which
company managers explained that Almeda conferred degrees
for life experience.
“They were trying to make it seem as legitimate as
possible, like, if you work hard your whole life, why
shouldn’t you be able to get a college degree?” says
Gardner, who, before moving to Florida, had worked in
human resources. “I thought it was hysterical,” she
says. “I have an HR background, and I wouldn’t have dared
to put something like that for college experience on my
résumé.”
Gardner says it didn’t take her long to learn that Almeda
was a very popular virtual school. One day, she was paid
to send hundreds of e-mails to Almeda graduates. “We were
looking for testimonials,” she remembers, “so we wanted to
know if their lives had changed after getting their
degrees.”
She was also paid to fill out hundreds of requests for
college transcripts. She was taught to read the request,
pull up a template for the transcript that met the
qualifications for the degree and plug in the
information. “They had templates for hundreds of bachelor
of science degrees in everything and bachelor of arts
degrees in anything — I’m telling you, anything,” she
says. “All I had to do is plug in all the information in
the right space — I only had to do that much — and I
couldn’t even keep up.”
Gardner was fired in February, but Blue Pearl Services is
still in operation. Its owners, Brett Loebel and Gerald
Enowitch, did not respond to requests for an interview.
Florida law requires any educational institution or any
business that does work for one to register for a license
with the state Department of Education. Blue Pearl
Services has not done so, and if it is indeed taking
orders for Almeda College and University, then it is in
violation of state regulations.
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