Friday, August 22, 2008
Multi-State Group of Attorney Generals Investigating SSH And Its Lenders
I have been carefully following the ongoing separate and joint efforts of 16 different states to investigate SSH, its owners, and its lenders KeyBank, Student Loan Xpress, and Citibank. The Attorney General's Offices for 15 different states have joined together to form a multi-state group to investigate SSH and its lenders. The 14 states that have agreed to be part of this joint effort are Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Nevada, New York, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah and Washington. 2 additional states, North Carolina and Colorado, were asked to participate in this group, but have so far declined to do so. All parties to the multi-state investigation have signed on to a Common Interest Agreement agreeing to share documents and strategies. I am attempting to get permission to publish a copy of this Common Interest Agreement on my blog. I believe that as a part of this multi-state effort, one or more lawsuits will be filed by the different State Attorney Generals' Offices against KeyBank, Student Loan Xpress, and Citibank. Details of the ongoing investigations are confidential. All of this is good news for all former students of SSH. I will continue to cooperate in every way possible with all government agencies investigating SSH, its owners and its lenders, and I urge my clients to do so as well. In that regard, I wrote to Associate Attorney General Andrew Shull of the Oregon Department of Justice earlier today and gave him and his investigators permission to speak directly to my Oregon clients who attended SSH. I spoke earlier today with an Associate Attorney General in a different state who is considering writing a letter to Citibank urging it to forgive the student loans that Citibank made to students that attended SSH in that state. This is based in part on the fact that the SSH school established in that state was never licensed to operate, and is also based on the fact that Citibank failed to adequately investigate the operations of SSH.