A private Jewish Michigan college committed fraud over the past decade, leading to millions of federal dollars being sent to the West Bloomfield school to pay for the education of students who weren’t enrolled there, according to the federal Department of Education.

The school remains open. It’s unclear whether criminal charges will be pursued.

Pell Grants are awarded to low-income students to help cover the costs of attending college. They do not need to be paid back. For 2015-16, the maximum Pell Grant is $5,775.

In a 17-page letter to the Michigan Jewish Institute, the department outlines more than 2,000 cases where Pell Grant funds were sent to the school to pay for students who were in Israel studying and never took one class at MJI. A total dollar amount of fraudulent Pell Grants to the school is not known.

The institute is tied to the local chapter of the Chabad-Lubavitch, an Orthodox Jewish group with a growing campus in West Bloomfield. Rabbi Kasriel Shemtov is president of the institute and spiritual director of the Shul. The Shul is part of the Campus of Living Judaism. The school was founded in 1994.

"The evidence the department has reviewed shows that many, if not most, of MJI students had no interest in obtaining, or intention of receiving, a degree or certificate offered by MJI," says a Feb. 29 letter to the school from the department. It was obtained by the Free Press.

"Rather," the letter continues, "they were 'enrolled' in MJI, and by MJI, for the sole purpose of getting MJI Pell Grants while these students 'studied abroad.' Such abuse of the Pell Grant program is unacceptable."

The letter told MJI the department was pulling the school's eligibility for all federal funds, including student aid.

"At this time, MJI believes it would not be appropriate for it to discuss DoE’s assertions in the press or in public forums, as that could be taken as politicizing the matter," MJI spokesman Steven Ellis said in an e-mail to the Free Press, referring to the Department of Education. "Perhaps, this is something others might do to gain some advantage, but not something MJI chooses to do while counsel & DoE are engaged." ​

School officials told students that if they were relying on Pell Grants or other federal student aid to pay tuition bills for the rest of the year, that they would have to come up with other sources of money to cover the bills.

The alleged fraud was uncovered during a routine review of MJI's application to renew its eligibility to receive federal student aid. The department looked at the years of 2006 to 2012, and then expanded to look at more recent years. In addition to a site visit, federal agents raided the school in summer 2015.

The school says once it established an online curriculum in 2006, interest from Orthodox Jews across the world increased, and enrollment in online courses boomed.

"A majority of MJI’s student body studies in Israel," the school said in a document sent to the Free Press. "Al

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