The Orange County business owner was behind bars in what California Attorney General Rob Bonta called a “multi-year, multi-million dollar, multi-million dollar student loan debt relief scam.”
Angela Kathryn Mirabella, 47, was being held without bail and was due to appear this Wednesday in the courtroom of the Santa Ana jail, according to jail records.
She was one of seven people charged with a variety of charges, including conspiracy to commit grand theft and the unauthorized use of personally identifiable information in a scheme that prosecutors say garnered more than $ 6 million from approximately 19,000 victims. nationwide, including 3,000 in California.
Mirabella is the founder of The Mirabella Group LLC, located in Huntington Beach, as well as Student Renew LLC and My Financial Solutions, both of Newport Beach, according to a grand jury indictment.
The alleged scheme involved several call centers that “scammed” student loan holders with promises of debt relief totaling $ 1,000 in fees paid monthly, Bonta said.
“They were scammed, they were scammed, ” Bonta said. “For some, their dreams have turned into horrible nightmares.”
The alleged victims paid the fee to obtain debt relief but did not receive any help and instead often ended up with higher student loan interest, defaults and late notifications, Bonta said.
More than 100,000 students who attended the now defunct ITT Tech Institute will receive their student loan forgiveness.
The defendants allegedly stole about $ 6.1 million, prosecutors said.
Student loan holders assumed their debt was now being handled by companies and that the fees they paid went toward the loans, prosecutors said.
The alleged scheme operated between 2017 and 2020, Bonta said.
The call centers reached about 380,000 student loan holders.
“Teachers, nurses, single parents, people from all walks of life, ” Bonta said. “They pretended to be associated with the US Department of Education and falsely guaranteed that they could reduce student loan payments.”
When some of the student loan holders became “suspicious,” the callers “applied pressure and falsified deadlines and implied there was no other way to get debt forgiven,” Bonta said.
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In some cases, defendants would extract personally identifiable information to change the terms of their student aid without the victims’ consent, Bonta said.
Applying for student loan assistance costs nothing through various legitimate government programs, Bonta said.
“If you are charged for any of this, you may be a victim of a scam and we want to hear from you, ” Bonta said.
Many of the victims were unaware that they had been scammed because they did not receive late payment notices due to programs that offered help during the pandemic.
The other defendants include Cesar Sandoval-Vilchis, 35, Stephen Allen Gamboa, 39, Briana Nacole Graham, 35, Matthew Bruce Walsh, 27, Teresa Marie Lovato, 45, and Paulina Francine Pacheco, 32.
Gamboa pleaded not guilty Thursday and was ordered to return to court on October 15 for a pre-trial hearing at the Central Justice Center in Santa Ana.
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