Tim and Tina Sweet sentenced for fraud

Lehigh County Judge J. Brian Johnson ruled against Timothy H. Sweet and Tina Sweet in the lawsuit brought against them in 2008 by Attorney General Tom Corbett.

The couple is permanently barred from working with international students and must pay more than $178,000 in restitution to various victims, including numerous host families and schools throughout the Lehigh Valley and Central Pennsylvania and civil penalties. To make sure funds might be available at such time as judgement was made, Judge Johnson froze USE’s funds after the lawsuit was brought against the Sweet’s.

Tim and Tina Sweet, of 1746 Roth Avenue, South Whitehall Township in Pennsylvania, ran the foreign student exchange organization United Student Exchange. They were sued for illegally diverting funds intended to pay for school tuitions and support for the students. Indeed, Attorney General Corbett claimed that

“The Sweets and their business – United Student Exchange – took advantage of families hoping to send their children to America to enjoy once-in-a-lifetime educational experiences,” Corbett said. “Instead, visiting students and their U.S. host families were met with empty promises and disappointment – left to fend for themselves by a business that claimed to be ‘uniting the world with Christ, one student at a time’.”

South-Korea

Most of the exchange students the Sweet’s scammed were from South-Korea. Upon arrival none of the Christian families promised were available and the exchange students were crammed together in so-called temporary homes. Background checks were not performed nor did host-families recruited after the students arrived complete application forms. In fact, the Sweet’s deceived new host-families into taking in exchange students.

If complaints were made about housing conditions, the host-families or lack of supervision, USE threatened to return the exchange students to their home countries.

United Student Exchange was not registered with either the Pennsylvania Department of State nor the federal J-1 Exchange Visitor Visa program, supervised by the U.S. State Department and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Judge Johnson concluded that the Sweets broke the law by using deceptive advertising. The couple has three months to pay the restitution and fines.

Attorney General Corbett said that violations include:

• Failure to pay host families, as promised.
• Failure to pay school tuition, as promised.
• Misrepresentation of support to students and host families.
• Contract terms in violation of Consumer Protection Law.

People to People Faces Wrongful Death Lawsuit

01/29/2008 | ConsumerAffairs |  People to People News

By Lisa Wade McCormick

Tyler Hill (Family photo)

Sheryl Hill hugged her 16-year-old son a little tighter — and a littler longer than usual — shortly before he boarded a plane last summer and took off on his much anticipated People to People Student Ambassador trip to Japan.

The Mound, Minnesota, woman took a mental picture of their last moments together at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport recalling every detail of the excitement in her son’s big brown eyes, his brilliant smile, and even the burgundy polo shirt and khaki pants he wore on that June 16, 2007, day.

Sheryl and her husband had worried about sending their son, Tyler — who had Type 1 diabetes and complex migraine headaches — on this People to People excursion.

But the travel organization that touts its ties to President Dwight D. Eisenhower convinced her that it had a solid safety record and a 24-hour response team that could handle any medical emergency.

That promise sealed the deal. It’s the reason Sheryl and Allen Hill let Tyler join his friends on the trip overseas.

Now that promise is at the heart of a wrongful death suit filed on Monday in Minnesota’s Hennepin County District Court.

The lawsuit alleges the organization and its delegation leaders refused to get Tyler the medical attention he requested and that his June 29, 2007, death in Tokyo is the result of their negligence.

But thirteen days before this tragedy — as Tyler and his friends said goodbye to their families in the states — Sheryl’s thoughts focused on how much this journey meant to her son.

“This was the most excited we’d ever seen him,” she says of Tyler, a history buff who was born on the anniversary of D-Day. “He dreamed of going to Japan.”

During their bittersweet farewell at the airport, Sheryl says Tyler — who had “dominated” his diabetes since its onset at age five — assured her that he’d be fine.

“He told me not to worry. Then he picked me up, did a backwards dip with me, and said ‘I love you momI’m going to make your proud of me.’

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Are P2P part of President Eisenhower’s programs?

Helpline US Department of State

1-866-283-9090 (24 hours a day, 7 days a week) The Department of State activated the helpline to ensure the health and safety of its exchange participants. Students have a right to be treated fairly and to report abuse without retaliation or threat of program cancellation. (Dep of State)

Blind trust in exchange organisations

You would not send your child to a house at the end of your street if you knew nothing about the person living there. Yet on the strength of a glossy brochure, the payment in some cases of vast sums of money, and an assumption that someone else has asked the right questions, we send our children thousands of miles across the world to stay with strangers.

The companies, organisations and individuals that abuse this blind trust cannot be allowed to continue to profit from it and we must all take responsibility for the care and safety of our young people. (Chris Gould)