Ten former students are suing a Markham, Ont. company for a collective $108,000 in tuition they paid to what turned out to be a business providing unapproved vocational programs. Ontario's superintendent of career colleges ordered the company to stop advertising and offering the program in July.
Mark2Win is run by Jinwei Xu. In an emailed statement, Xu described his program as "cutting edge" and said the model of internship was specified in the company's service agreements.Program unapproved As of Monday, Xu's company was still being fined $2,000 a day on top of the $40,000 penalty the superintendent of career colleges ordered on July 29.
"I also explained that my company and I had stopped providing or advertising any unapproved vocational programs even before they made such decisions in July." In his statement he said he has "no idea on ITLabPro's operation" and that MetaDataPlus used his name and image as an instructor on their website without his knowledge or consent.
Xiong tried to get a refund from Xu in June when he found out the company wasn't registered to provide the training course he'd taken. But the company refused and told Xiong to sue them if he wanted to try to get the money back, according to emails reviewed by CBC Toronto.Like Xiong, she says she was drawn to the program based on the promise of an internship, along with an advertised 92 per cent of students getting job placements and instructors who were experts in their field.