Under the federal government's nose, in the nerve center of the U.S. military, illegally certified workers - including at least four supervisors - removed asbestos with little or no training in how to do it safely. [...] Most asbestos workers in Virginia are Hispanic migrant laborers, large numbers of whom speak little English and receive little or no formal asbestos removal training. They are issued phony training certificates so they can be licensed by the state to handle asbestos. [...] The bogus training certificates issued to workers on the Pentagon job were among hundreds produced by one Virginia Beach-based asbestos diploma mill that operated from 1995 to 2000, court records show. The company's owner is serving 15 months in federal prison for fraud. [...] As president of F&M Environmental Technology Inc. in Virginia Beach, Frankland P. Babonis sold as many as 650 phony certificates, charging $85 to $475 each. Little or no training was provided, according to federal records. Certificates sometimes were simply mailed or faxed to "trainees.'' [...] a Richmond company, Industrial Training and Support Services, and its owner, Omar Gonzalez, were sentenced in federal court for operating an illegal asbestos-worker certification operation similar to Babonis'. http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=60799&ran=85573
Diploma mill owners, like most criminal activity, are likely to get away with their crime for a while. Like most criminals, they keep repeating their criminal behavior and their sum chance of getting caught goes up.
Asbestos II I've been talking to the US Attorney in Syracuse NY, who has case about to go on trial, of a licensed asbestos contractor who allegedly certified that he had removed asbestos from schools, churches, etc., when he really hadn't. The man has his degrees, including doctorate, from Western States University, that dreadful place formerly in Yuma AZ but now Doniphan MO. And, remarkably, the name of the operator of the equally dismal accreditor (John Scheele of the Accrediting Commission International) appears on this man's "expert witness" list.
