2 Former Morris Brown College Officials Are Charged With Fraud
By Amy Argetsinger, Washington Post Staff Writer, December 10, 2004

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The former president and financial aid director of Morris Brown College in Atlanta have been charged with orchestrating a $5 million scheme that drew on fraudulent student loans and grants to camouflage the school's serious financial troubles.

Dolores Cross, president from late 1998 to early 2002, was named in the 34-count federal indictment along with Parvesh Singh, her former director of financial aid and enrollment services.

Prosecutors allege that the two fraudulently obtained hundreds of federally insured loans and grants in the names of students who were not enrolled at the time and diverted the money to pay for consultants, business travel and other things designed to promote the college's reputation.

Those patterns of financial mismanagement were part of the reason Morris Brown, one of the nation's oldest historically black colleges, lost its accreditation and access to federal funding last year, prompting students to leave in droves and enrollment to plunge from nearly 3,000 to barely 150.

The college is still struggling to stay afloat. And prosecutors say the mismanagement that wrecked the school also devastated the finances of unwitting students who discovered only years later when they tried to obtain credit elsewhere that there were defaulted loans in their names.

"Hundreds of students were victims of the defendants' alleged fraud," David E. Nahmias, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, said in a statement released yesterday. "In many cases, unauthorized student loans inhibited the students' ability to obtain financial aid at other schools."

Current college leaders praised the work of the federal prosecutors, who said that the new administration aided the investigation. "We are eager to bring closure to this matter," James E. Young, chairman of the college board of trustees, said in a statement. "We are extremely appreciative of the outpouring of support from all the constituencies of the college in supporting [its] restoration."

If convicted, Cross, 68, and Singh, 62, face two to five years in prison for each count of fraud and theft.

Cross's attorney could not be reached yesterday evening. But John Garland, an attorney for Singh, said his client is innocent. Singh, he said, came to Morris Brown College after a sterling career of more than 25 years in financial aid, and did his best to help a school that was already $8 million in debt.

He noted that prosecutors do not allege that Singh pocketed any money.

"He came in, and he imposed a best-practices system on a university that was in complete disarray," Garland said. "He had no knowledge of any funds going to ineligible students."