“If you’re a crook, then I’m a crook."
December 14, 2014 10:30 AM   Subscribe

The Minister Who Went to Jail for Financial-Aid Fraud
Ozel Clifford Brazil was a respected clergyman who helped thousands of African American teens get into college. What drove him to break the law?

Misguided Altruism Trailer
posted by andoatnp (23 comments total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
 
The judge summarized a statement from Brazil’s probation officer, telling the courtroom, “It was a mystery to him why Brazil committed this offense, because it was clear that he wasn’t making any money off this activity.”

[...]

The prosecutors shared their theory. “What you have here is somebody who made himself a powerful figure, someone whom—we’ve seen from the letters he submitted, one came from a partner at Skadden & Arps,” said prosecuting attorney David Vaughn. “If he didn’t have his program, how else would he travel in these circles of medical doctors and having all of these students looking up to him? It’s ego.”


Of course if you're a white man from the middle class (with an Ivy League degree, no less) it's a complete mystery why someone would do everything in their power to help children who are also people of color get a college education. Why, if they wanted to go to college that badly, of course their parents could just write a check or call in some favors from one of their friends!

It might have been a crime, but Dr. Brazil is a hero.
posted by winna at 10:44 AM on December 14, 2014 [9 favorites]


Work the financial aid system to get more kids into college without making a dime? 41 months in prison. Work the entire financial system for personal gain to the detriment of millions? Eh, have a bailout. What a strange set of priorities we have. Brazil helped get a lot of kids into college that otherwise probably wouldn't have gone and the ripple effect from that will long outlive him. That's what people will remember about him, not some pointless prosecution.
posted by MikeMc at 10:54 AM on December 14, 2014 [33 favorites]


Justice?

Horseshit.
posted by BlueHorse at 11:03 AM on December 14, 2014


Work the financial aid system to get more kids into college without making a dime? 41 months in prison. Work the entire financial system for personal gain to the detriment of millions? Eh, have a bailout. What a strange set of priorities we have.

Those aren't our priorities, they're someone else's.
posted by clockzero at 11:06 AM on December 14, 2014 [2 favorites]


They're our priorities as long as we stand for it.
posted by blucevalo at 11:24 AM on December 14, 2014 [9 favorites]


They're our priorities as long as we stand for it.

They are the priorities as long as we stand for it.

We shouldn't take any responsibility for the corruption of a system that's totally out of our control. The illusion of that control is only a distraction from the depth and character of the problem.
posted by clockzero at 12:00 PM on December 14, 2014 [3 favorites]


We stand them because our priority is to get through life with minimum personal risk. It's easier to put up with it than to wage revolution and risk dying. Things only ever change when many people begin to starve.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 12:14 PM on December 14, 2014 [4 favorites]


Metafilter: It's easier to put up with it than to wage revolution and risk dying.
posted by jpe at 12:38 PM on December 14, 2014 [6 favorites]


I doubt the author knows, or could easily have found out, but what I would really like to know is who exactly made the decision to go after him.

And for what reason....

(Perhaps it's in the doco?)
posted by IndigoJones at 1:19 PM on December 14, 2014 [5 favorites]


One of the prosecutors says that this manipulation took money from other students who needed it. Is that how financial aid works? When it runs out its gone? I thought if you qualified, you got it, and setting the budget involved setting those qualifications, not deciding on a total number and cutting off everyone who missed out, no matter how destitute.
posted by hermanubis at 1:23 PM on December 14, 2014


There will be revolution when people are pushed far enough. There are already surprising points of agreement between the right and the left. As long as the hyper wealthy remain blissfully unaware of the dangers inherent in their systemic greed, they will continue to push us to the brink.
posted by evilDoug at 1:24 PM on December 14, 2014 [1 favorite]


Is that how financial aid works? When it runs out its gone? I thought if you qualified, you got it, and setting the budget involved setting those qualifications, not deciding on a total number and cutting off everyone who missed out, no matter how destitute.

Funny you should ask. (If you read further down, Harkin's staff claims that there won't be a problem... but, of course, he's on his way out.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 3:02 PM on December 14, 2014 [2 favorites]


85k/year is around the 75th percentile of American household incomes, and is more than what half of people with masters degrees make.

It does seem that Brazil seems like a genuine force for good in the world, and may very well have had a lousy defense lawyer.
posted by leopard at 5:30 PM on December 14, 2014


That ambulance trick is badass too. I hope this guy gets a cable show at least.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:54 PM on December 14, 2014


As long as the hyper wealthy remain blissfully unaware of the dangers inherent in their systemic greed, they will continue to push us to the brink.

I don't see how the hyper-wealthy fit into this story.
posted by IndigoJones at 5:58 PM on December 14, 2014


I don't see how the hyper-wealthy fit into this story.

"When they talk about their former mentor and grapple with his fate, they often cite examples of large-scale fraud that has gone largely unpunished: the subprime mortgages that caused the housing bubble had a disproportionate effect on black homeowners, for example. Years later, The Washington Post reported that the housing crisis would continue to ruin African American credit scores for years to come, setting the entire community back decades. Yet the bankers who issued those loans never served any jail time."

Did you even RTFA?
posted by blucevalo at 6:03 PM on December 14, 2014 [4 favorites]


As an aside, I've just discovered that a great way to tell if someone is writing for a white or black audience is to see if they feel the need to explain double consciousness.
posted by Rubbstone at 6:17 PM on December 14, 2014 [1 favorite]


Is that how financial aid works? When it runs out its gone?

Federal Pell grants are an entitlement. If you qualify, you get it. Federal Direct Loans work similarly. State and institutional money, however, usually comes from a fixed pool, either allocated to each school by the state legislature or set by the institution based on what they want to/can afford to spend.

Schools use various methods to package aid, but often allocate state and institutional aid on a first-come first-served basis to students who meet certain need or merit requirements. For instance, a school might decide to give $2000 of The State Grant to all students with a Federal EFC less than 3000. Unfortunately, because the governor has only given $2,000,000 to the school, only a thousand students can actually get the grant. The school might try to make it more equitable by lowering the EFC threshhold, adjusting award amounts, etc, but there is a hard limit.

So scammers aren't (generally) using up federal money that would go to other students, but they might be using up state or institutional money.
posted by a dangerous ruin at 6:20 PM on December 14, 2014 [3 favorites]


Did you even RTFA?

(My earlier response to this was either deleted or never made it.)

Yes, I did read it, and please watch your mouth. I see the ueber-wealthy slant as an unnecessary distraction from what was otherwise an interesting story. I get tired of having certain memes (e.g. eat the rich) dragged into places where they can just as easily be left out. It's a lazy, obvious way of exciting the kind of people who get excited by certain memes.

I thought this story more than interesting enough as it stood, albeit lacking a few things that I would have been interested to know (as I said in my first comment). As we see from comments here, it clearly didn't explain the mechanics of financial aid, which would be useful for anyone trying to assess the guy's culpability or lack thereof.

But then, I read for information rather than for confirmation.
posted by IndigoJones at 9:07 AM on December 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


Rich, white people getting treated differently from poor, black people is not a 'distraction' from the issue. It is the issue.
posted by Zalzidrax at 9:37 AM on December 15, 2014


From the story, this guy was helping people in the top quartile of the income distribution qualify for financial aid by misreporting income. Yeah, other (whiter, richer, more evil) people are crooks too and don't always get punished but that's not the "issue."
posted by leopard at 11:05 AM on December 15, 2014


From the story, this guy was helping people in the top quartile of the income distribution qualify for financial aid by misreporting income.

From the story, this guy was pushed into helping one person in the top quartile misreport income by the FBI. I find it pretty likely from the context of the rest of the story that this was the most egregious instance of fudging the figures that he got involved in, and the large majority of his work was in uncovering entitlements that poor people were going to get cheated out of.
posted by ambrosen at 1:44 PM on December 15, 2014


From the article, Brazil was charged with 13 counts of mail fraud and 7 counts of financial assistance fraud, 13 former students testified against him, and he was sentenced to 41 months in prison and ordered to pay over 700k to the government. I would love to be able to offer you more details so we could discuss this further, but the Atlantic article was only 110,000 words long and what Brazil did apparently really isn't the "issue", so that's all I have.
posted by leopard at 3:23 PM on December 15, 2014


« Older Pilot-wave theory “seems to me so natural and...   |   20 Best New Beers of 2014 Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments