Is this fraud in California? There's an SAT academy that's been in operation for the past 15 years whose sole proprietor holds himself out to be a graduate of a distinguished university. In the Korean-American community, where a tutor attended college is given the most weight in deciding which tutor to select. However, upon research, it turns out that he has never attended the university. And when confronted, he threatened me, saying that "there will be consequences if his business reputation is harmed." I am a former student of his. Relevant facts include. Average tuition is 1,500-2,000 for a summer class (taught mostly by him). Average enrollment during the summer is 50 students. Average college consulting service is 4,000-10,000. He does show results with some of his students. However, his business is all about farming the best students, not helping students get into reach schools. My question is whether this is a case of fraud in the state of California or falls under some other legal category.
It would appear so. California Civ. Code §1572 says that actual fraud is various acts with intent to deceive another party thereto, or to induce him to enter into the contract The suggestion, as a fact, of that which is not true, by one who does not believe it to be true; I will suppose that the individual knows that he did not attend the university (is not delusional), and you can prove that the statement is false. It would take a bit of testifying to establish that the claimed institution was a material fact which induced customers to enter into a contract. The hardest part will be establishing damages.
You don't have enough information. What you have is a feeling. And feelings are a lousy reason to engage in a legal action. Now, you have a very strong feeling, and that makes it seem to you like the strength of the feeling alters the above advice. Yes, it does. Very strong feelings are an exceptionally terrible reason to engage in a legal action! I never lose. My superpower is to set aside feelings, gather all the facts, including the ones I don't like, and so doing, know what the judge will say. What you need is more info. For instance, out of your prejudice, you have decided for yourself that "unaccredited" is the same thing as "degree mill". It isn't. There's a huge gulf between: an eccentric university whose brilliant management is too busy actually teaching to play the political games necessary to get an accreditation certificate, and that process may be corrupt in that state. This could be especially so if the university largely serves minorities, and the barriers to accreditation are borne out of bigotry. If so, you could blunder your company right into the middle of some other state's discrimination problem. a fake college whose solitary purpose is sneak immigrants in to take employment, by misusing student visas. a college who uses new media to teach, and their methods are too cutting-edge for the stodgy old accreditation institutions to accept. a college who represented themselves as genuine to the students, and indeed made a fair effort to book-teach them, but the person whose job was to secure accreditation didn't know what they were doing, and found an accreditation agency which wasn't genuine. Exactly what you presume: a student swaps a huge pile of money for a degree, presumably that pile of money is in the form of a private student loan at stupid interest rates. It's likely the person actually did all the real work of college, the accreditation issue is news to them, and if anyone was hoodwinked, it was them. All this misses the point: accreditation is not the important issue. What matters is whether the student applied themselves, organized themselves well, did their best, and willfully extracted a good education. A person can "do the minimum" all the way through Harvard, and be not half the employee as a go-getter at Boston Community College who exceeded the course material and snuck over to Harvard's library for more. Damn the credentials, you want the successful student. Oh wait, this is the Law SE. Why do you want the successful student? Because you have a fiduciary duty to do what is in the best interest of the company and place good employees. To follow your own Don Quixote crusade against people whose colleges had faulty accreditation, is a conflict of interest. You aren't even interested in ascertaining whether this person is a good employee. And that, really, is the bottom line. You (or rather, anyone but you) should be looking at that person's PRs and 360's, and looking at their overall performance for the company. The company's criteria for keeping or replacing should be the probability of finding someone significantly better at about the same pay rate. If this person is an earnest performer, you may have trouble doing that. It's that simple. Employees must do what is in the company's best interest. There's an old joke. Kevin asks the sales manager, "Why do you keep Morty? I've seen his written memos and reports, the guy is a terrible speller." "Yeah, but he outsells all the other salesmen 3:1," said the manager. And I pay him to sell, not to spell."
Yes, this is legal, unless Richardson, TX has a specific local law making it illegal. In the US, discrimination is legal, unless it discriminates against one or more specific enumerated classes. Under federal law, and as far as I am aware, Texas law, students are NOT a protected class. As such discrimination against them is legal, unless Richardson, TX or its incorporating county have a specific law or regulation prohibiting it. Incidentally, age is generally not a protected class, and when it is a protected class, it is generally only illegal to discriminate against people above a specified age, not below. Note that discrimination happens all the time, over a variety of factors, that many people don't even consider discrimination. For example, many colleges and universities discriminate on the basis of GPAs for acceptance to various programs; this is legal. In the past, many colleges and universities discriminated against potential students on the basis of sex or race, which is now illegal.
That's a sad story. The answer to your question is: Yes. If your case is attractive enough then a lawyer might agree to represent it on a contingency basis. Contact lawyers in the jurisdiction where the fraudster has a physical, business, or legal presence. In the U.S. you can ask for referrals to lawyers from the state bar association, or you can call or email them or their firms directly. However, if the amount of potential damages is too small, or the prospects of collecting them too low, then you will probably not find any lawyer interested in taking the case on contingency. If the fraudster has left many victims then you might try to pool your cases to make legal action more attractive. You also might contact the state attorneys in his jurisdictions, as they will sometimes pursue cases against serial scofflaws.
Apparently an obscure business forced the California government to collect tax from amazon. No, this is not true. Mr. Grosz filed a lawsuit asking the court to force California to collect tax revenues. The lawsuit is still pending before the court without a decision on the merits. As the saying goes, anyone can sue for anything; their success is another matter. The apparent legal basis for standing is section 526a of the Code of Civil Procedure, which allows taxpayers to sue against wasteful or illegal government spending: 526a (a) An action to obtain a judgment, restraining and preventing any illegal expenditure of, waste of, or injury to, the estate, funds, or other property of a local agency, may be maintained against any officer thereof, or any agent, or other person, acting in its behalf, either by a resident therein, or by a corporation, who is assessed for and is liable to pay, or, within one year before the commencement of the action, has paid, a tax that funds the defendant local agency ... The Plaintiff has claimed that, allegedly, there is a mandatory duty to collect taxes and that failure to do so constitutes a waste. The court will decide if it will accept this argument and compel the collection.
There's a critical error in your argument but no transfer of goods or services will be present. Actually: No, there is a transfer of service made by booking: resources are put aside by the service provider to be available for the booking person once they arrive. That is a service. These resources are not available to be sold otherwise: a room is booked and thus blocked from being rented to someone else, or a seat on the plane is booked and not offered to others, and so on. As long as the booking person arrives, no damage happens. However, if they no-show, there is damage: the resources go to waste unused: the room stays empty, or the plane flies with one less person. And the cancellation/no-show fees that are contractually obligated to make the damaged party whole (to compensate for the wasted resources) are also not paid. Knowingly using a fake credit card number or empty debit card that can't pay the fees and planning not to show up would be clearly fraud. One such paragraph that might be used to hunt down could be 18 USC §1341 - aka &quot;mail fraud&quot; - or much more likely, 18 USC $1343 - wire fraud. The latter is because any fraud on the internet is wire fraud. Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud [including a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services], or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
The customer list is indeed a trade secret if the shop kept its customer list secret and has an advantage from having that customer list, while others don’t have it. And I would think that is the case, because a competitor laying their hands on the list could for example send special offers to the customers in the list. The question is whether your two hairdressers took that customer list and whether the store has reasonable evidence that they did. If customers find out where their favourite hairdresser moved to that’s no legal problem. Can’t understand why no attorney wants to take the case. To the attorney it doesn’t make a difference whether they took the list or not. If they took the list then his or her job is to end the case with the smallest possible amount of damages being paid. PS. Just read in the comments that there is an accusation of "intentional interference with economic relationship". I would want a lawyer who knows the difference between perfectly legal competition which includes trying to get customers to move their business, and "intentional interference with economic relationship". PS. Really make sure that these guys appear in court. With a lawyer. Not appearing means that if the plaintiff says "Judge, these guys did X, punish them!" and they are not there to say "We absolutely didn't do X, prove it if you can", the judge will assume that they did X.
Student loans that cover tuition and other educational expenses are for the charges that you incur by being enrolled. There may be some relationship between being enrolled and a career goal such as a degree or a job, but what you bought was the right to be in a class. You do in fact have something to show for the fees paid. Your issue is mainly with the university and not with the agency that lent you the money. The lender does not purport that you will receive a degree, so they have not been engaged in any wrong-doing. The prospects for suing the university to force them to let you complete the degree program are slightly better but still negligible. It is only technically possible to repudiate a student loan via bankruptcy, if you can prove that repaying the loan would impose an undue hardship on you (and you still have to go through the bankruptcy process).