Latest news with #McMansion
Business Insider
13-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Insider
After losing too many bidding wars for a home in LA, I bought a 5-bedroom house in the suburbs. I quickly realized it was a mistake.
After 17 years in Los Angeles, I was fluent in traffic shortcuts, niche coffee shops, and how to be optimistic when someone casually mentioned they were working on a screenplay. I could parallel park on a hill, one-handed. I'd survived preschool waitlists, earthquake drills, and overpriced poke bowls. Los Angeles felt like home, and I saw myself growing old there. However, when I needed to move because of a crazy neighbor, my Zillow searches started getting broad. I began sneaking peeks at places farther and farther outside the city, like Temecula — a city an hour-and-a-half away. I was online ogling homes with three-car garages and double walk-in closets. For the price of a one-bedroom condo in Silver Lake in LA, I could buy an entire Mediterranean villa with a pool, fruit trees, and neighbors who waved without trying to invite me to their open-mic. So, after losing one too many bidding wars for million-dollar bungalows in Highland Park, LA, I found a huge McMansion with a pool in Temecula — the land of wine, wide streets, and not a single billboard featuring a Marvel character. In 2022, me, my spouse, and three kids, packed up and headed for the suburbs. The beginning felt like a luxurious vacation At first, it was charming—like "moving into a Reese Witherspoon movie" charming. There were rolling hills, quiet cul-de-sacs and fresh air. Our new house had 3,000 square feet of space—so much that I didn't know what to do with it all. The kids used the living room as a skatepark. I was drunk on square footage and low property taxes. I was living the suburban dream. Then, the silence set in—hollow silence where your own thoughts echo. Back in LA, every restaurant felt like a possibility. In Temecula, there were only chains that closed by 9 p.m. It felt like a vacation that had gone on too long, and I was in an alternate reality. Friends from LA promised to visit. "We'll come down for a weekend! Make it a wine-tasting thing!" However, lonely weekends came and went. It turns out a two-hour drive might as well be eight when you have traffic, kids, and careers. Only a couple of friends ever made it. I began to get lonely The isolation crept in slowly. One day, I realized I hadn't had a real conversation with someone outside my family in a week. My most stimulating interaction was arguing with Alexa about her song choices. I missed spontaneity. I missed my friends. I even missed my exasperating old neighbor who videotaped me every time I left my house. Everything in Temecula felt out of sync with me. There was no late-night bookstore, no tiny theater doing weird plays. The Thai food was just okay. Los Angeles had its chaos, but it had energy. It had texture. It had weirdos, and I like weirdos. I looked around at the perfectly paved parking lots, the matching beige stucco homes, the drive-thru pharmacies, and I felt like I was living inside a screensaver. Pleasant, sure, but also kind of fake. I called my partner and said, "I think we made a mistake." She sighed and said, "You think?" Back to Los Angeles, where I belong A few months later, we put the house up for sale to head back to LA. We found a place to rent in a less desirable neighborhood than the one we'd lived in before moving to the suburbs. It didn't have a pool. Or a lemon tree. Or anything that could be described as "ample closet space." But we got our people. We got our weird little coffee shops and bumpy roads. Yes, I still have to fight for parking, and I pay more for less space, and someone did try to sell me collagen powder at the dog park last week. But I feel like myself again. Temecula taught me something important: I'm not built for wide open spaces unless they come with live music, street tacos, and a chance encounter with someone from my improv class. I don't want peace and quiet. I want chatter and chaos and complicated parking signs. I thought I was craving calm, but what I was really craving was connection. For me, that lives in the noisy, messy, beautiful chaos of Los Angeles. In the crammed grocery stores, the traffic on the 101, and the surprise hugs at Trader Joe's.
New York Post
09-07-2025
- Business
- New York Post
This Ninja Air Fryer is 50% off for Prime Day — I said what I said
New York Post may be compensated and/or receive an affiliate commission if you click or buy through our links. Featured pricing is subject to change. I used to think air fryers were for people who microwave bacon and call it 'brunch.' Then, at a client's McMansion, I tried the Ninja Air Fryer XL (that I'm 100% sure they didn't know they had). Forgive me, but this thing slaps. Like, crispy Brussels sprouts in 10 minutes slaps. Like, wings without a gallon of oil slaps. Now it's 50% off for Prime Day, and I don't even care how oversaturated air fryer culture is, I'm getting one. And if you're a Prime member (aka someone with questionable impulse control and free shipping), you should too. Let me back up. If you don't already have Amazon Prime, this week is the one time of year when it pays for itself. Prime Day 2025 runs now through July 12, and the deals are, frankly, wild. This Ninja Air Fryer XL is the lowest price I've ever seen it, which makes it cheaper than a mediocre brunch entree. And unlike microwaved brunch, this thing actually delivers. Amazon The Ninja Air Fryer XL holds up to 5.5 quarts, which means it can handle an entire bag of frozen cauliflower gnocchi or enough chicken thighs for four hungry adults. It has a wide temperature range (105 degrees F to 400 degrees F), so you can dehydrate fruit or flash-crisp leftover pizza. The basket is nonstick, dishwasher-safe, and heats evenly without the weird burnt edges you get from most toaster ovens pretending to be multi-talented. It preheats fast, cooks faster, and doesn't leave your kitchen smelling like regret. This article was written by Kendall Cornish, New York Post Commerce Editor & Reporter. Kendall, who moonlights as a private chef in the Hamptons for New York elites, lends her expertise to testing and recommending cooking products – for beginners and aspiring sous chefs alike. Simmering and seasoning her way through both jobs, Kendall dishes on everything from the best cookware for your kitchen to cooking classes that will level-up your skills to new dinnerware to upgrade your holiday hosting. Prior to joining the Post's shopping team in 2023, Kendall previously held positions at Apartment Therapy and at Dotdash Meredith's Travel + Leisure and Departures magazines.
Daily Mail
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Student loans crisis tycoon revealed: Rolls-Royce-driving 'thought leader' who once boasted of his links to colleges now facing government probe suddenly appears keen to distance himself
On a parcel of Berkshire commuter belt surrounded by tall walls, impenetrable hedges and locked security gates, a local businessman is building his dream home. And money appears to be no object. The project involves not one, but two existing McMansions, plus a couple of fields and a small area of woodland. They are being amalgamated into a vast domestic mega-compound. A small army of contractors has spent months building state-of-the-art extensions, laying turf and installing statues and fountains. When finished, their creation will cover roughly ten acres of green belt, a stone's throw from Royal Ascot. 'It's like something out of a Bond movie,' reports one neighbour. 'They're working round the clock. Sometimes even using floodlights after dark. The cost must be astronomical. Millions. Tens of millions. Who knows?' The man orchestrating this undertaking turns out to be a 56-year-old entrepreneur named Sarwar Khawaja. The director of some 15 active companies, which operate largely in real estate and education, he may not be a household name. But not for want of trying. In September, for example, Khawaja, or someone close to him, paid the Independent newspaper's education section to write a piece of 'sponsored content' about his life and times. Headlined 'Sarwar Khawaja's vision: empowering through education', the 500-word hagiography dubbed him a 'pioneering force' capable of 'visionary leadership' whose 'career is a testament to his relentless drive to push the boundaries of what is possible'. On social media, the self-styled 'professor, philanthropist and visionary' likes to post images of himself glad-handing such celebrities as His Majesty the King, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the shoe designer Jimmy Choo. He's also spent years flaunting the trappings of success online, from his chunky wristwatches and sharp suits to a Rolls-Royce bearing the number-plate SK7. Yet just over two months ago, the tub-thumping stopped. A personal website, which had dubbed him a 'distinguished British educationalist, entrepreneur, thought leader, venture capitalist and educational philanthropist', was taken down. An Instagram feed claiming he was 'fun to be around' and liked 'promoting coexistence and diversity' was set to private. His profile on X vanished, and a LinkedIn account touting him as an expert in 'leadership, education and AI technologies' was subjected to extensive editing. The bout of shyness came at an interesting time for Sarwar Khawaja. For it coincided with a most unfortunate turn of events at a business close to his heart. Specifically, he was (to quote that 'sponsored' Independent content) 'at the helm' of an educational establishment named Oxford Business College (OBC). It had been 'under his leadership' since 2018. Various articles, some carrying his byline, called him its 'Chairman of Business Development', 'Chairman of the Strategic Board' and 'Executive Board Chairman'. For years, the link to OBC had been something Khawaja boasted about. In fact, his name was literally above the door of its franchised campus building in Nottingham (more of which later), in 4ft-long letters. It sits under the quotation 'It's not where you come from, it's where you choose to go'. Eight months ago, OBC's head of student services Noaman Islam shared an image of this sign, applauding 'beautiful words by Professor Sarwar Khawaja, our exceptional leader and beacon of inspiration'. But in late March, everything changed. For Oxford Business College was centre-stage in a remarkable political scandal. One that turned this institution under Khawaja's 'leadership' into a symbol of almost everything that is wrong with Britain's ailing higher education system. It began with an article in the Sunday Times newspaper which identified OBC as a hotbed of student-loan fraud. Hundreds of its students were, the article claimed, dishonestly enrolling on 'franchised' degree courses there despite having no intention of doing any actual studying. Instead, they wanted merely to access lucrative loans. Such scams are happening across the higher education sector, leaving British taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of millions – and perhaps billions – of pounds. A recent Government probe, which merely scratched the surface of the problem, traced at least 1,785 fraudulent funding applications to just six colleges since 2022, costing taxpayers £22million. Its authors reckoned at least 270 students at OBC were involved, claiming £4million, but said the real cost may be far higher. Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, was outraged. In April, she made an unprecedented statement to Parliament, saying that Oxford Business College's 10,000 existing students were to be banned from receiving any student loans at all. It highlighted 'credible concerns' about 'recruitment and attendance' at the institution, saying the Government's Internal Audit Agency feared it was recruiting students whose 'competence in the English language' was inadequate and then wasn't monitoring whether they bothered to attend class. OBC was mightily upset, saying the probe had concluded without finding evidence of fraud, illegality or malfeasance. It called the move 'a wholly unjustified action which threatens the future of the college and our students', adding it 'firmly believes that the DfE's decision is unlawful and has lodged an urgent application for judicial review'. Days later, I visited Oxford Business College. There I discovered something truly bizarre: the institution that Khawaja had 'under his leadership' was what students of Russian propaganda might call a Potemkin university. While the building's website was filled with images of dreaming spires and undergraduates bicycling down cobbled streets or rowing along the River Cherwell, its actual headquarters turned out to be on the upper floors of a grimy Royal Mail sorting office near the train station. Despite in theory being home to thousands of students, the place was almost entirely empty, aside from a couple of burly Eastern Europeans smoking outside. This odd state of affairs may speak to the bizarre but deeply concerning nature of student loan fraud, which revolves around the fact that anyone with 'settled status' in the UK can fund university studies via support from the state-owned Student Loan Company (SLC). A sum of up to £9,535, covering their annual tuition fees, is then paid directly to the establishment they attend. Up to £13,348 a year more is then handed out as a 'maintenance loan', which goes directly into the student's personal bank account in three tranches. In theory, this cash handout is a loan. But it starts to be repaid only when recipients are earning over £25,000 a year. Should they never reach that threshold, it will be written off after four decades. What's more, if the 'student' decides to move abroad, their debt becomes tricky, if not impossible, to call in. To put things another way, the system creates a perverse incentive for unscrupulous people to enrol on courses and collect loans, while having no intention of attending class. Many instead carry on working in full-time low-wage jobs. The scam seems particularly popular among Eastern European immigrants. Last year 85,000 Romanian nationals with settled status in Britain – about 15 per cent of the overall population – received student loans. While some will have been genuine students, many were not. Little wonder that Britain's student debt pile is mounting rapidly, with taxpayers due to be on the hook for £500billion by 2040. Aside from the scammers, the people who profit from this scandal are the institutions they attend. For every year a phoney student is on the books, they collect £9,535 in fee income. While some institutions may not know when students have dishonest intentions, others are accused of not doing enough to stop it. And in extreme cases, unscrupulous private education providers (often running 'franchised' courses on behalf of proper universities) routinely offer places to people who are utterly unqualified – in some cases barely able to speak English. The worst then don't bother to monitor whether they attend class, do any academic work or are even in the country. Questions began to be asked about Oxford Business College in 2023 when a hair-raising New York Times article accused it of sending agents around immigrant neighbourhoods in Britain, 'knocking on doors or stopping people in shopping malls', in an effort to recruit students. The report told how staff were then pressured to accept applicants who could barely spell on to courses. It was all about 'money, money, money,' Stefan Lespizanu, a former recruiter for OBC, told the paper. More recently, according to the Sunday Times, the college has accepted applications for people who spoke English as a second language, provided they passed a test on the mobile phone app Duolingo. What makes the scandal at OBC especially ugly is that it seems to have been widely known about in the higher education industry. Yet precious little was done to bring the problem to the attention of the authorities until the Press began to report on it. I can reveal that in November, Buckinghamshire New University, which ran degree programmes with OBC via a lucrative 'franchise' scheme, became so concerned about loan fraud there that it hired a consultant named Julie Kelly to carry out a formal review. A copy of her 22-page report, leaked to the Mail, chronicles a host of shocking flaws. 'Systemic failures in the registry processes' meant fraudulent applications were rife, and people already working 40-hour-a-week jobs were routinely allowed to enrol, raising 'concerns that they may not be genuine students'. Kelly found many undergraduates sending emails with 'a time stamp which would indicate that the student is outside of the UK' and added that 250 'academic misconduct' cases hadn't been adjudicated, a situation that was 'indefensible should the students formally complain or escalate to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator'. What's more, the consultant found, average attendance was below 50 per cent. And some students who hadn't attended a single class for over a year were still being allowed to access loans, which, she concluded was 'a major institutional risk as it breaches SLC funding rules'. Buckinghamshire New University (BNU) was given these detailed findings in November. But it then took the, in retrospect, disgraceful decision not to share them with the Department for Education, the Office for Students or the Student Loans Company. Asked why, a BNU spokesperson this week said the decision was taken by a trio of senior staff members, stating 'all have since left the university's employment and we are unable to comment about any decisions they took regarding the sharing of Julie Kelly's report'. However 'we will now share the report with the Office For Students retrospectively'. In other words, BNU is finally going to do something, now the shambles has been exposed by the Mail. Meanwhile, inside Oxford Business College, at least one senior member of staff was also well aware of dodgy student loans. Take Dr Julie King, the former Dean of OBC's Nottingham campus. I can reveal that she emailed colleagues in February complaining of woeful attendance there, which had been 'no more than 50 per cent'. She wrote: 'I firmly believe this is due to many students not being in the country, consistently not attending, yet drawing their student finance.' After Bridget Phillipson's statement to Parliament in April, Dr King resigned from her job, writing to colleagues: 'I was shocked to hear of the Secretary of State's letter to OBC, essentially closing the College. We all know the reasons for this, how some people, still part of OBC, unscrupulously recruited poor-quality students whom we have struggled to engage and teach.' Dr King did not respond when asked whether she drew the attention of regulators to this scandal. However she has removed her time at OBC from her online CV on LinkedIn, in an apparent effort to expunge it from the record. That also seems to have been the tactic pursued by the businessman who was 'at its helm', the aforementioned Sarwar Khawaja. Recent months have brought efforts to delete various links to the disgraced institution from the internet. Sadly for him, however, a paper trail remains. For Khawaja's connection to OBC dates back to 2018, around the time it began offering 'franchised' degrees with Buckinghamshire and several other universities. This caused it to expand with astonishing speed, growing from 28 to 265 employees in five years, and opening campuses in cities and towns, including Slough and Nottingham, catering for as many as 10,000 students. Disclosures to Companies House show that the tactic is hugely profitable. At the end of 2020, the college's turnover was £5million a year. This rose to £18million the following year and £40million the one after. Last year, it turned over £49.7million with profits up from £7.1million to £9.5million. The business was then sitting on a cash pile of some £20million. Yet mystery surrounds where all that money ends up. Oxford Business College has two 'ultimate controlling parties' who have been around for decades. They are its executive director, Padmesh Gupta, and (somewhat oddly) a dress designer named Titiksha Shah. However, the duo share an annual dividend of only £200,000. The fate of the rest of the cash is unclear. Which brings us back to Khawaja and his business empire. And in particular a company that he owns and chairs named SK Hub, which claims to be 'redefining the future by combining purpose and innovation across diverse industries'. Khawaja turns out to be the landlord of at least two buildings where Oxford Business College operates. One, the Nottingham Training and Enterprise Centre, is its campus in the city. Another, SK's head office, the Atrium in Uxbridge, west London, was until March the registered address of a subsidiary, Oxford Business College UK Limited. SK Hub was last year described as 'a dynamic parent company of the college' on the programme of OBC's annual conference last year – though an OBC source told me that was a 'mistake' and should have said 'partner'. Meanwhile, SK Hub's YouTube channel consists almost entirely of promotional videos for the college. In other words, the two organisations seem closely intertwined. Yet both SK Hub and Mr Khawaja have deleted all reference to the disgraced College from their websites and social media feeds since the scandal broke earlier this year. When I asked for clarification of the nature of the relationship, an OBC source described SK Hub as 'a supplier which provided business consultancy services such as IT solutions to OBC as well as being the landlord of premises in Nottingham', though technically those premises seem to be registered to another one of his companies which is based in SK Hub's office. All very confusing, though we should stress that there is no evidence to suggest that SK Hub, Khawaja or indeed OBC's directors or controlling parties knew about or encouraged fraudulent student loan applications. Slightly harder to airbrush from history, however, are various articles Khawaja wrote in academic journals. For example, in a study of 'deviant workplace behaviour' published in a journal named Business Systems Research earlier this year, the 'about the author' section hails him as 'a British educationist, thought leader, sociopreneur [sic] and philanthropist'. To support this claim, Khawaja says he's 'the chairman and CEO of Ealing College Upper School,' an institution that hasn't existed since 2013, according to the Department for Education, and 'Chairman of Oxford Education Group', a firm which turns out to have one employee, operating out of a service address in Harrow, registers almost no financial activity and whose website is currently defunct. He also claims to be a bestselling writer who 'has co-authored a critically acclaimed book The Teacher along with the bestselling author, Nobel Prize nominee and the inventor of mind-mapping Tony Buzan. The Teacher was released worldwide and is being translated into several languages.' That is untrue: no such book has ever been published, still less released worldwide, according to Mr Buzan's estate. Quite why someone who claims to be a 'distinguished educationalist' should put his name to an academic journal article peddling such nonsense is anyone's guess: inquiries on this front to both Khawaja and SK Hub, along with OBC, went unanswered. The mysterious entrepreneur 'at the helm' of disgraced Oxford Business College is, doubtless, a successful man. But behind his 'visionary leadership' there is much that doesn't add up.
Daily Mail
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Revealed: 'Educational philanthropist' at the centre of bogus student loans scandal: Roll's-Royce-driving 'thought leader' who once boasted of his links to colleges now facing government probe
On a parcel of Berkshire commuter belt surrounded by tall walls, impenetrable hedges and locked security gates, a local businessman is building his dream home. And money appears to be no object. The project involves not one, but two existing McMansions, plus a couple of fields and a small area of woodland. They are being amalgamated into a vast domestic mega-compound. A small army of contractors has spent months building state-of-the-art extensions, laying turf and installing statues and fountains. When finished, their creation will cover roughly ten acres of green belt, a stone's throw from Royal Ascot. 'It's like something out of a Bond movie,' reports one neighbour. 'They're working round the clock. Sometimes even using floodlights after dark. The cost must be astronomical. Millions. Tens of millions. Who knows?' The man orchestrating this undertaking turns out to be a 56-year-old entrepreneur named Sarwar Khawaja. The director of some 15 active companies, which operate largely in real estate and education, he may not be a household name. But not for want of trying. In September, for example, Khawaja, or someone close to him, paid the Independent newspaper's education section to write a piece of 'sponsored content' about his life and times. Headlined 'Sarwar Khawaja's vision: empowering through education', the 500-word hagiography dubbed him a 'pioneering force' capable of 'visionary leadership' whose 'career is a testament to his relentless drive to push the boundaries of what is possible'. On social media, the self-styled 'professor, philanthropist and visionary' likes to post images of himself glad-handing such celebrities as His Majesty the King, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the shoe designer Jimmy Choo. He's also spent years flaunting the trappings of success online, from his chunky wristwatches and sharp suits to a Rolls-Royce bearing the number-plate SK7. Yet just over two months ago, the tub-thumping stopped. A personal website, which had dubbed him a 'distinguished British educationalist, entrepreneur, thought leader, venture capitalist and educational philanthropist', was taken down. An Instagram feed claiming he was 'fun to be around' and liked 'promoting coexistence and diversity' was set to private. His profile on X vanished, and a LinkedIn account touting him as an expert in 'leadership, education and AI technologies' was subjected to extensive editing. The bout of shyness came at an interesting time for Sarwar Khawaja. For it coincided with a most unfortunate turn of events at a business close to his heart. Specifically, he was (to quote that 'sponsored' Independent content) 'at the helm' of an educational establishment named Oxford Business College (OBC). It had been 'under his leadership' since 2018. Various articles, some carrying his byline, called him its 'Chairman of Business Development', 'Chairman of the Strategic Board' and 'Executive Board Chairman'. For years, the link to OBC had been something Khawaja boasted about. In fact, his name was literally above the door of its franchised campus building in Nottingham (more of which later), in 4ft-long letters. It sits under the quotation 'It's not where you come from, it's where you choose to go'. Eight months ago, OBC's head of student services Noaman Islam shared an image of this sign, applauding 'beautiful words by Professor Sarwar Khawaja, our exceptional leader and beacon of inspiration'. But in late March, everything changed. For Oxford Business College was centre-stage in a remarkable political scandal. One that turned this institution under Khawaja's 'leadership' into a symbol of almost everything that is wrong with Britain's ailing higher education system. It began with an article in the Sunday Times newspaper which identified OBC as a hotbed of student-loan fraud. Hundreds of its students were, the article claimed, dishonestly enrolling on 'franchised' degree courses there despite having no intention of doing any actual studying. Instead, they wanted merely to access lucrative loans. Such scams are happening across the higher education sector, leaving British taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of millions – and perhaps billions – of pounds. A recent Government probe, which merely scratched the surface of the problem, traced at least 1,785 fraudulent funding applications to just six colleges since 2022, costing taxpayers £22million. Its authors reckoned at least 270 students at OBC were involved, claiming £4million, but said the real cost may be far higher. Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, was outraged. In April, she made an unprecedented statement to Parliament, saying that Oxford Business College's 10,000 existing students were to be banned from receiving any student loans at all. It highlighted 'credible concerns' about 'recruitment and attendance' at the institution, saying the Government's Internal Audit Agency feared it was recruiting students whose 'competence in the English language' was inadequate and then wasn't monitoring whether they bothered to attend class. OBC was mightily upset, saying the probe had concluded without finding evidence of fraud, illegality or malfeasance. It called the move 'a wholly unjustified action which threatens the future of the college and our students', adding it 'firmly believes that the DfE's decision is unlawful and has lodged an urgent application for judicial review'. Days later, I visited Oxford Business College. There I discovered something truly bizarre: the institution that Khawaja had 'under his leadership' was what students of Russian propaganda might call a Potemkin university. While the building's website was filled with images of dreaming spires and undergraduates bicycling down cobbled streets or rowing along the River Cherwell, its actual headquarters turned out to be on the upper floors of a grimy Royal Mail sorting office near the train station. Despite in theory being home to thousands of students, the place was almost entirely empty, aside from a couple of burly Eastern Europeans smoking outside. This odd state of affairs may speak to the bizarre but deeply concerning nature of student loan fraud, which revolves around the fact that anyone with 'settled status' in the UK can fund university studies via support from the state-owned Student Loan Company (SLC). A sum of up to £9,535, covering their annual tuition fees, is then paid directly to the establishment they attend. Up to £13,348 a year more is then handed out as a 'maintenance loan', which goes directly into the student's personal bank account in three tranches. In theory, this cash handout is a loan. But it starts to be repaid only when recipients are earning over £25,000 a year. Should they never reach that threshold, it will be written off after four decades. What's more, if the 'student' decides to move abroad, their debt becomes tricky, if not impossible, to call in. To put things another way, the system creates a perverse incentive for unscrupulous people to enrol on courses and collect loans, while having no intention of attending class. Many instead carry on working in full-time low-wage jobs. The scam seems particularly popular among Eastern European immigrants. Last year 85,000 Romanian nationals with settled status in Britain – about 15 per cent of the overall population – received student loans. While some will have been genuine students, many were not. Little wonder that Britain's student debt pile is mounting rapidly, with taxpayers due to be on the hook for £500billion by 2040. Aside from the scammers, the people who profit from this scandal are the institutions they attend. For every year a phoney student is on the books, they collect £9,535 in fee income. While some institutions may not know when students have dishonest intentions, others are accused of not doing enough to stop it. And in extreme cases, unscrupulous private education providers (often running 'franchised' courses on behalf of proper universities) routinely offer places to people who are utterly unqualified – in some cases barely able to speak English. The worst then don't bother to monitor whether they attend class, do any academic work or are even in the country. Questions began to be asked about Oxford Business College in 2023 when a hair-raising New York Times article accused it of sending agents around immigrant neighbourhoods in Britain, 'knocking on doors or stopping people in shopping malls', in an effort to recruit students. The report told how staff were then pressured to accept applicants who could barely spell on to courses. It was all about 'money, money, money,' Stefan Lespizanu, a former recruiter for OBC, told the paper. More recently, according to the Sunday Times, the college has accepted applications for people who spoke English as a second language, provided they passed a test on the mobile phone app Duolingo. What makes the scandal at OBC especially ugly is that it seems to have been widely known about in the higher education industry. Yet precious little was done to bring the problem to the attention of the authorities until the Press began to report on it. I can reveal that in November, Buckinghamshire New University, which ran degree programmes with OBC via a lucrative 'franchise' scheme, became so concerned about loan fraud there that it hired a consultant named Julie Kelly to carry out a formal review. A copy of her 22-page report, leaked to the Mail, chronicles a host of shocking flaws. 'Systemic failures in the registry processes' meant fraudulent applications were rife, and people already working 40-hour-a-week jobs were routinely allowed to enrol, raising 'concerns that they may not be genuine students'. Kelly found many undergraduates sending emails with 'a time stamp which would indicate that the student is outside of the UK' and added that 250 'academic misconduct' cases hadn't been adjudicated, a situation that was 'indefensible should the students formally complain or escalate to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator'. What's more, the consultant found, average attendance was below 50 per cent. And some students who hadn't attended a single class for over a year were still being allowed to access loans, which, she concluded was 'a major institutional risk as it breaches SLC funding rules'. Buckinghamshire New University (BNU) was given these detailed findings in November. But it then took the, in retrospect, disgraceful decision not to share them with the Department for Education, the Office for Students or the Student Loans Company. Asked why, a BNU spokesperson this week said the decision was taken by a trio of senior staff members, stating 'all have since left the university's employment and we are unable to comment about any decisions they took regarding the sharing of Julie Kelly's report'. However 'we will now share the report with the Office For Students retrospectively'. In other words, BNU is finally going to do something, now the shambles has been exposed by the Mail. Meanwhile, inside Oxford Business College, at least one senior member of staff was also well aware of dodgy student loans. Take Dr Julie King, the former Dean of OBC's Nottingham campus. I can reveal that she emailed colleagues in February complaining of woeful attendance there, which had been 'no more than 50 per cent'. She wrote: 'I firmly believe this is due to many students not being in the country, consistently not attending, yet drawing their student finance.' After Bridget Phillipson's statement to Parliament in April, Dr King resigned from her job, writing to colleagues: 'I was shocked to hear of the Secretary of State's letter to OBC, essentially closing the College. We all know the reasons for this, how some people, still part of OBC, unscrupulously recruited poor-quality students whom we have struggled to engage and teach.' Dr King did not respond when asked whether she drew the attention of regulators to this scandal. However she has removed her time at OBC from her online CV on LinkedIn, in an apparent effort to expunge it from the record. That also seems to have been the tactic pursued by the businessman who was 'at its helm', the aforementioned Sarwar Khawaja. Recent months have brought efforts to delete various links to the disgraced institution from the internet. Sadly for him, however, a paper trail remains. For Khawaja's connection to OBC dates back to 2018, around the time it began offering 'franchised' degrees with Buckinghamshire and several other universities. This caused it to expand with astonishing speed, growing from 28 to 265 employees in five years, and opening campuses in cities and towns, including Slough and Nottingham, catering for as many as 10,000 students. Disclosures to Companies House show that the tactic is hugely profitable. At the end of 2020, the college's turnover was £5million a year. This rose to £18million the following year and £40million the one after. Last year, it turned over £49.7million with profits up from £7.1million to £9.5million. The business was then sitting on a cash pile of some £20million. Yet mystery surrounds where all that money ends up. Oxford Business College has two 'ultimate controlling parties' who have been around for decades. They are its executive director, Padmesh Gupta, and (somewhat oddly) a dress designer named Titiksha Shah. However, the duo share an annual dividend of only £200,000. The fate of the rest of the cash is unclear. Which brings us back to Khawaja and his business empire. And in particular a company that he owns and chairs named SK Hub, which claims to be 'redefining the future by combining purpose and innovation across diverse industries'. Khawaja turns out to be the landlord of at least two buildings where Oxford Business College operates. One, the Nottingham Training and Enterprise Centre, is its campus in the city. Another, SK's head office, the Atrium in Uxbridge, west London, was until March the registered address of a subsidiary, Oxford Business College UK Limited. SK Hub was last year described as 'a dynamic parent company of the college' on the programme of OBC's annual conference last year – though an OBC source told me that was a 'mistake' and should have said 'partner'. Meanwhile, SK Hub's YouTube channel consists almost entirely of promotional videos for the college. In other words, the two organisations seem closely intertwined. Yet both SK Hub and Mr Khawaja have deleted all reference to the disgraced College from their websites and social media feeds since the scandal broke earlier this year. When I asked for clarification of the nature of the relationship, an OBC source described SK Hub as 'a supplier which provided business consultancy services such as IT solutions to OBC as well as being the landlord of premises in Nottingham', though technically those premises seem to be registered to another one of his companies which is based in SK Hub's office. All very confusing, though we should stress that there is no evidence to suggest that SK Hub, Khawaja or indeed OBC's directors or controlling parties knew about or encouraged fraudulent student loan applications. Slightly harder to airbrush from history, however, are various articles Khawaja wrote in academic journals. For example, in a study of 'deviant workplace behaviour' published in a journal named Business Systems Research earlier this year, the 'about the author' section hails him as 'a British educationist, thought leader, sociopreneur [sic] and philanthropist'. To support this claim, Khawaja says he's 'the chairman and CEO of Ealing College Upper School,' an institution that hasn't existed since 2013, according to the Department for Education, and 'Chairman of Oxford Education Group', a firm which turns out to have one employee, operating out of a service address in Harrow, registers almost no financial activity and whose website is currently defunct. He also claims to be a bestselling writer who 'has co-authored a critically acclaimed book The Teacher along with the bestselling author, Nobel Prize nominee and the inventor of mind-mapping Tony Buzan. The Teacher was released worldwide and is being translated into several languages.' That is untrue: no such book has ever been published, still less released worldwide, according to Mr Buzan's estate. Quite why someone who claims to be a 'distinguished educationalist' should put his name to an academic journal article peddling such nonsense is anyone's guess: inquiries on this front to both Khawaja and SK Hub, along with OBC, went unanswered. The mysterious entrepreneur 'at the helm' of disgraced Oxford Business College is, doubtless, a successful man. But behind his 'visionary leadership' there is much that doesn't add up.
New York Times
20-02-2025
- New York Times
Before the string of athlete robberies, there was the burglary at Gronk's house
Anthony Almeida exited his Dodge Ram just after 8 p.m. on Feb. 4, 2018, Super Bowl Sunday, around the time the Philadelphia Eagles took a 10-point lead over the New England Patriots into halftime. Security cameras recording at the Stop and Shop grocery store in Foxboro, Mass., captured Almeida picking out several items. He paid with cash but entered his phone number into a credit card terminal to activate the store's rewards program. That was intentional; he wanted to establish an alibi. Advertisement A few hundred yards away, a figure in dark clothing approached a home he had good reason to believe would be vacant: a five-bedroom house that years earlier was described as 'bigger than a McMansion, smaller than an actual mansion,' in a 2015 Sports Illustrated profile of its owner, Patriots star tight end Rob Gronkowski. Earlier this month, the FBI announced an investigation into a string of recent burglaries at the homes of professional athletes — including NFL stars Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Joe Burrow — orchestrated by what investigators are calling South American Theft Groups (SATG). Federal prosecutors charged seven Chilean men for their alleged roles in the burglaries, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday. GO DEEPER Seven men charged for alleged roles in burglaries targeting athletes' homes The FBI's Feb. 7 announcement contended that 'athletes may have been targeted due to their publicly available schedules, making their properties more vulnerable.' The NFL and NBA sent security warnings to teams in November, with the NBA's memo describing the theft groups as 'well-organized, sophisticated rings that incorporate advanced techniques and technologies, including pre-surveillance, drones, and signal jamming devices.' The burglary at Gronkowski's home, orchestrated by then 26-year-old Shane Denn and longtime friend Almeida, then 31, lacked that kind of sophistication. Seven years later, Almeida, who said he didn't know about the plan until the night of the crime, admits parts were 'kind of stupid.' And almost everything was caught on video. According to Almeida, who ran a construction business at the time, he wouldn't have been there if not for a different kind of robbery attempt on a Dorchester street around 2003, when he was about 17 and Denn was around 12. 'He was getting bullied for … I think it was a Nintendo 64, and I stepped in,' Almeida recalled. 'From that day on, I guess we became friends. He liked me. I saved him from getting his items taken from him.' Advertisement Almeida said he would do almost anything for Denn. So when his friend asked for a lift on the night of the Super Bowl in 2018, Almeida agreed. On the drive to Foxboro — Denn had gotten Gronkowski's address from a woman he met at a party, Almeida said — Denn told him his plan to 'go check something out,' according to Almeida, who said he reluctantly agreed to help. 'He needed a ride out there, and as we're driving, he's telling me whose house it is and that nature,' Almeida said. 'At first, I didn't want (any) involvement so I just stayed in the parking lot in my truck. 'After that, I guess I got myself involved.' The pair made their way to the parking lot of the Stop and Shop, which bordered Gronkowski's neighborhood. A security camera captured Almeida's truck backing into a spot along the wood line close to Gronkowski's neighbor's house. The NFL star's house was approximately 120 yards away from the parking lot — the length of a football field, including the end zones. A neighbor's video surveillance system recorded Denn and Almeida running alongside Gronkowski's fence. Around 8 p.m., cameras around Gronkowski's house and a guest house on the property captured Denn apparently checking out basement windows before leaving the property. The police report noted it was 'highly likely' he broke a window and left to test whether the home's security system was triggered. Less than an hour later, surveillance cameras caught Denn inside Gronkowski's home, at one point breaking into a locked bedroom, and later walking toward the basement window while holding a safe and a bag. Video footage indicated Almeida's truck left the parking spot at the Stop and Shop and returned to the area multiple times that night. Almeida said he was 'about to leave (Denn's) ass.' But he stayed, and Denn eventually returned. Almeida said he grew concerned when Denn said 'something about guns.' Advertisement 'I'm not a person that carries a gun or even hangs around people that carry guns,' Almeida said. 'So when he mentioned something about a gun, it was a like, 'I need to get somewhere and get you and all this sh– out of my truck.'' After the burglary, the two men went to one of Denn's relatives' homes in Quincy to split up their take, then parted, Almeida said. The next day, Gronkowski and his two housemates arrived home from the Super Bowl in Minneapolis and noticed the basement door was broken. Gronkowski, whose agent did not respond to requests for an interview, called police to report the break-in. No items of his were reported stolen. Robert Goon, one of the housemates, had the majority of items taken, including watches, jewelry, rare coins and three handguns. In all, the burglars made out with just short of $200,000 in loot from his room. 'We failed to turn the alarm on when we left,' Goon said. 'But I don't think that would have stopped these guys 'cause they had a mission. They knew what they were doing. They knew how they were getting in.' Goon, 44, was described in the 2015 Sports Illustrated profile as a 'friend and confidant (who) serves as Gronk's contractor, dishwasher, airport chauffeur, security guard and roommate.' He moved out of the house in recent months and still remembers details gleaned from the 2018 video footage, including Denn turning on a basement light and looking directly at one of the cameras. He wasn't wearing anything to cover his face, Goon said. 'To this day I still don't understand what they were thinking or why he would do it,' Goon said. According to Goon, Denn took items off Goon's dresser and removed the safe, which was bolted to the wall inside his closet. The three stolen handguns, which Goon said were locked in safes inside a drawer in his nightstand, troubled him the most. Advertisement 'They're deadly weapons,' he said. 'If they're in the wrong hands, they can do terrible things.' It didn't take long for investigators to zero in on the culprits. Surveillance footage from inside and outside the homes, the Stop and Shop and, yes, even a Dunkin' Donuts was listed among the evidence in a 2018 warrant report. A bottle of Goon's cologne was located in the woods between the Stop and Shop and Gronkowski's neighbor's place. Authorities received a tip about the stolen coins — an 1879 U.S. Morgan Dollar and an 1896 U.S. Dollar — which were found at a dealer's in Weymouth. On March 23, 2018, authorities executed a search warrant at Almeida's home, finding watches that had been reported among the missing items. Almeida, Denn and Eric Tyrrell, then a coworker of Almeida's who had tried to pawn the coins, were ultimately arrested and indicted in Norfolk County Superior Court. Denn arrived at his 2018 arraignment hearing wearing a Patriots T-shirt. Almeida pleaded guilty to one felony charge of breaking and entering, three charges of larceny over $250 and one charge of larceny from a building. He was sentenced to four years of probation. In 2020, Denn, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment, received a four- to five-year sentence in state prison followed by three years probation after his release. Tyrrell, who could not be reached for comment, pleaded guilty to receiving stolen property and was sentenced to two years probation. Almeida and Denn also were ordered to pay a combined $69,500 in restitution, which Goon said has not yet been paid in full. Goon said he and his former housemates stepped up their security 'by 10 times' following the 2018 incident. His advice to athletes now? 'You gotta protect yourself,' Goon said. 'If you're gonna have expensive things in your house, just make sure you have the best security.' (Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
