Bible college says human trafficking claims by former students fueled by T visa scheme

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Friday, November 22, 2024

Updated: Nov. 22, 2024, at 12:55 p.m. EST

Officials at Olivet University, a Christian Bible college headquartered in Anza, California, say a sophisticated T visa scheme has fueled a civil lawsuit filed by four former international students who accuse the school and its officials of human labor trafficking. A "T-visa scheme" involves fraudulently using a human trafficking claim to convert a temporary visa into permanent residency.

In the lawsuit, previously reported by the Los Angeles Times, the former students — Dawin Liranzo Galan, Roland Broccko, Minerva Ruiz and Rebecca Singh — claim they were confined, surveilled and forced to work sometimes for free for more than 40 hours per week when they should have been studying at the Bible college on full scholarships.

Olivet has denied all the claims.

Singh, who is an Indian citizen, first reported to local police in 2018 that she was forced to work without pay at the rural college for months doing all kinds of labor, including “housekeeping, babysitting, laundry services, and help in the kitchen.”

Galan, who formerly resided in Spain, as well as Broccko and Ruiz, who came to the U.S. from Venezuela, had similar narratives of forced labor.

“Galan was forced to work at Olivet approximately 40 hours per week. He was forced to perform manual labor, including receiving and unloading large containers full of furniture for Olivet,” the lawsuit alleges. “Galan also unloaded the furniture items and then assembled them. Galan never received any money as payment for his labor at Olivet.”

The T nonimmigrant visa, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is a temporary visa that allows “certain victims of a severe form of trafficking in persons to remain in the United States for an initial period of up to 4 years if they complied with any reasonable request for assistance from law enforcement in the detection, investigation, or prosecution of human trafficking or qualify for an exemption or exception.”

Human trafficking or trafficking in persons, the agency said, “is a crime in which traffickers use force, fraud, or coercion to compel individuals to provide labor or services, including commercial sex.” The T nonimmigrant status was created by Congress in October 2000 as part of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act to help protect victims of the crime. Nonimmigrants who gain this status are able to become lawful permanent residents if they qualify.

The lawsuit lists among the defendants: Matthias Gebhardt, who served as the dean of Olivet Theological College & Seminary and head of the Financial Aid Committee at the time the plaintiffs were at Olivet; David Jang, founder of both Olivet University and the World Olivet Assembly; and other school officials, including Jasmine Park, Andrew Lin, Rachel Cheung, Nathanael Tran and Stephanie Choi Gebhardt.

Attorney C. Yong Jeong of Jeong and Likens, L.C. sent a comprehensive response to the LA Times report in a letter on Oct. 10, which CP has reviewed. Jeong explained that the lawsuit, which was originally filed in September 2023 and then later amended, had been dismissed at least once already. He demanded corrections or a retraction of the report. Olivet University President Jonathan Park told CP that the school has yet to receive a response from the LA Times.

“These allegations continue to be completely false," Park asserted in an earlier statement to LA Times reporter Colleen Shalby, which was included as an exhibit in the legal letter to the LA Times.  "The lawsuit was dismissed once already (called ‘demurrer’ in California), and the main key plaintiff's wife (Nogleides) withdrew herself in the amended complaint because her [mother who is a] lawyer advised that their actions were ‘repaying goodness with malice’ (original in Spanish language is ‘quien mucho ayuda, mal le paga’). 

"In fact, the individuals who originally filed these complaints have offered invitations to settle on numerous occasions in civil court, all of which the university has rejected, because the allegations are completely false.”

The plaintiffs had asked the school for $300,000 each to withdraw their claims but the school rejected the offer, a school official told International Business Times. Their attorney reportedly lowered the amount to settle the claims to $200,000, but still, the school refused, arguing they had done nothing wrong.

OU President Park said the students’ decision to sue the school for human trafficking appears to fit with the T-visa scheme because they were only at the school for short periods before they transferred to other schools to do their ESL studies.

“They received a three-year ESL visa [from their new schools], and after their three years was up, they alleged human trafficking from three years ago,” Park explained. “They are in the process, or might have already received it, but what was already discovered is they were in the process of receiving this human trafficking victim visa.”

Colleen Shalby, the LA Times reporter whose byline appears on the story, did not respond to CP’s request for comment. The attorney for the plaintiffs, Darren Harris of Harris Grombchevsky LLP, when asked if he would be willing to respond to questions about the lawsuit, told CP that he had written to Olivet’s attorney and was waiting to hear back. He did not indicate a willingness to respond to CP’s questions beyond that. He asked if CP had any connections to the university and he was told CP’s CEO is a graduate of Olivet.

Sitting on a historic Indian sanctuary, Olivet University in Anza spans more than 900 acres, according to the school’s website. The school offers a variety of full degree and certificate programs at its Anza headquarters plus campuses in San Francisco, California; Washington, D.C.; St. Louis, Missouri; Nashville, Tennessee; and Orlando, Florida. In 2022, the campus the school ran in New York lost its permission to operate after the state's education department decided not to renew the school's expiring permit, citing non-compliance with laws and regulations.  

Besides the four students mentioned above, former Chinese students Tingbo Cao, 41, and Qilian Zhou, 35, have also made similar claims of being forced to work without pay for their education, according to the LA Times.  

They also alleged that they loaned Olivet University hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2019 and were only repaid this year. They told the Times that the university still owes them thousands of dollars in interest on the loans, which the school denies.

In a letter to the San Francisco field office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, reviewed by CP, OU attorneys requested an investigation of and punishment for Cao, Zhou and another woman identified as Sophia Yu “for the malicious and false human trafficking report ... in order to obtain a T-Visa.”

Yu, also known as Sophie or Jihee Yu, was the “mastermind behind the scheme” to fraudulently get T visas, the attorneys alleged.

“Tingbo Cao and Qilian Zhou, a married couple, and former students of Olivet University’s San Francisco campus, have made a false report to the Department of Homeland Security (‘DHS’), claiming they were victims of human trafficking and labor exploitation. The couple’s intention was to obtain a T-Visa as their visas were expiring. The mastermind behind their actions is Sophia Yu, who is suspected to be affiliated with a pro-North Korea cell group,” the attorneys wrote.

“The school had never borrowed money from Tingbo. The San Francisco campus where Tingbo lived is open, with no fences or gates, allowing free access to anyone, and no one interfered with their daily lives. They regularly left the campus for Sunday worship services at the church of their choice (not Olivet’s Chapel) in the San Francisco suburbs, which supports the claim that no one confined or controlled them,” the attorneys added. “The school has never forced them to work.”

Allegations against Newsweek 

Olivet University has also been accused of violating a number of education regulations by California's Bureau of Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE). In a response to the allegations reviewed by CP, Katherine A. Lee Carey, another attorney for the university, accused Newsweek of “instigating and influencing, directly or indirectly, BPPE towards some type of negative action by making false claims and referring the Bureau to inaccurate and misleading articles Newsweek itself had written about Olivet.”

Carey alleged that Newsweek is actively trying to cause Olivet University to lose its permission to operate in the state of California, similar to how actors for the publication influenced education officials in New York to not renew the school's permit to operate.

She pointed out that both Newsweek co-owners Dev Pragad and Johnathan Davis were at one point active members of World Olivet Assembly, the global denomination affiliated with Olivet University, and they both had ties to the school. Pragad and Davis are both reportedly no longer members of the denomination.

Newsweek is engaged in a lawsuit, NW Media Holdings Corp. v. IBT Media Inc., where defendants include Olivet University and Olivet University's founder, David Jang, along with IBT — which previously owned Newsweek — and IBT CEO Etienne Uzac. The lawsuit's earlier claims against defendants World Olivet Assembly and IBT Vice President of Technology Younseok (Titus) Choi were dismissed.  

The complaint alleges that the defendants conspired to delete 1.8 terabytes worth of data from Newsweek’s Google Workspace to cover up ties between World Olivet Assembly and IBT related to a host of misconduct by the defendants after IBT sold Newsweek to N.W. Media Holdings Corp., in 2018. This claim was dropped in an amended version of the complaint after it was dismissed.

Lawyers for Olivet University insist that Newsweek has been fueling an ongoing campaign to damage the school’s reputation with negative reporting. Some of those reports contained false statements on at least two occasions — in February 2018 and March 2023. The university also reported that they filed a defamation lawsuit against Newsweek on June 30, 2023.

Newsweek did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CP on Thursday but gave the following statement Friday after publication: "There is no truth to the allegations. Newsweek has a proud history of rigorous reporting on Olivet. We remain committed to continuing our coverage of Olivet."

In a July 2022 statement, after Olivet University’s permission to operate in New York was not renewed, the school pointed to the dispute as a factor.

“As mentioned already in OU's April statement, it has to be pointed out that the media that is driving the false narrative is Newsweek and the driving motive is an internal shareholder conflict. Newsweek's CEO Dev Pragad has threatened Johnathan Davis that he would attack Olivet University if Mr. Davis did not surrender control and ownership of Newsweek to him.”