Owner of "sham" Chesapeake Barber School gets 5 years for $4.5 million GI Bill Fraud

By Scott Daugherty, The Virginian-Pilot

​​The co-owner of a Chesapeake barber college was sentenced Wednesday to more than five years in prison on charges he defrauded the Veterans Affairs Department out of more than $4.5 million.

His wife, the other owner, is to be sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court in Norfolk.

But what about the more than 350 veterans who collected over $10.5 million in GI Bill benefits while attending the “sham school,” where the unofficial motto was “We’re here to earn, not to learn”? That remains unclear.

To date, no students have been charged, and a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia declined to comment. Joshua Stueve cited an “ongoing investigation.”

When they finish looking into the College of Beauty and Barber Culture in Chesapeake, prosecutors will have to review each student’s case.

But even if they wanted to pursue charges against 350-some students, they probably couldn’t. The Norfolk office secured only 172 federal indictments total in 2016.

Chesapeake Commonwealth’s Attorney Nancy Parr said this week that federal authorities had not referred any cases relating to the barber college to her office.

William Grobes IV, 45, pleaded guilty in November to two felonies: conspiracy to commit wire fraud and engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity.

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