A married couple in California have been found guilty of defrauding wounded veterans of over $1m in a scam involving a film school that offered tuition and hardware they never received.
Judith Paixao and Kevin Lombard, who will be sentenced in October, created the Wounded Marine Career Foundation, a non-profit organisation that was used to embezzle federal funds, which they spent on their own holidays, a laptop and food.
“Each student was supposed to get a film-making package,” veteran Joshua Frey told CBS News. This was meant to include technical goods, such as a MacBook Pro, digital cameras and lighting equipment. However, students never received what they were promised.
“They made it seem like it was crazy to question them,” he said. “They promised to send us the equipment after we graduated from the course, but it never happened. They took advantage of us in a vulnerable spot.”
Frey spent $90,000 of his veteran scholarship award with the couple, while another student spent $88,000.
Paixao and Lombard were found to have inflated the costs of the course from $10,000 to nearly $90,000. The investigation found that they had been paid over $1.2m from the the Department of Veteran Affairs to cover tuition fees, books and equipment.
Laura Duffy, the US attorney for the southern district of California, said: “The fraud committed by these defendants, who used money set aside to help wounded veterans and spent it on themselves, is particularly offensive.”
