October 3, 2011 – The former owner of the U.S.’s largest asbestos abatement training school was sent to prison recently. Albania Deleon was charged with providing false asbestos abatement licenses for untrained workers who used their licenses to perform asbestos removal without following proper procedures. She allegedly sold training certificates to illegal aliens, who had never participated in the mandatory four-day safe asbestos. Untrained and falsely certified, these workers put thousands of area residents at risk of asbestos exposure, which could eventually result in mesothelioma.
Deleon was charged with the crime in 2008 but fled the country, never serving her 87-month prison sentence, which was to be followed by three years of supervised release. As restitution, Deleon was to pay $1.2 million to the IRS and $369,015 to AIM Mutual Insurance Company.
During the five years that Deleon owned the Environmental Compliance Training school, Deleon sold approximately 2,000 false certificates to illegal aliens. Deleon even went as far as to provide inspectors of the school with false completed and graded final exam papers, with the applicants’ signatures on each of them.