Fifteen schools, including Wake Forest University and the University of Maryland, have joined an alliance called CNA-USA to bypass agents and build relationships directly with Chinese high schools, said Richard Hesel, principal of Art & Science Group, a Baltimore-based consulting firm that helped set up CNA- USA last year. Representatives have visited high schools in Guangdong province, conducted application workshops for students, and provided college counseling at no cost to the families or high schools, Hesel said。

　　The University of Connecticut, which has increased international enrollment from 25 to 128 in five years, sends admissions staff to China. “We tell students, ‘We don’t have agents,’” Lee Melvin, vice president for enrollment planning and management. “They can’t call on your behalf. They can’t write essays on your behalf. We’ll build our international population ourselves。”

　　That didn’t protect Lin and Li. They were steered to an empty inn and a branch campus meant for commuters by their Chinese agents and Martin, the former federal investigator。

　　‘Clever Guy’

　　In an interview at a Friendly’s restaurant in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, Martin, 49, talked about how earlier that morning, his car had broken down as he was taking two of the four Chinese high-school students who live and pay rent in his Granby home to a standardized test。

　　Born in White Plains, New York, Martin attended Manhattan College in the Bronx, served three years in the Coast Guard, and then became a Treasury agent investigating money laundering。

　　He left the government in 1995 because it was “busting my chops” about how he could afford his Westport, Connecticut, home on Long Island Sound, he said. Outside income as a builder paid for the home, he said. “I walked away clean。”

　　Martin “is a clever guy in an unconventional sense,” said Richard Klugman, a former Treasury colleague。

　　Martin embarked on a career in real estate, which included renovating a crack house in Torrington into a hotel. Two of his properties went into foreclosure in the past three years as real estate values plunged nationwide。

　　He formed American International Student Centers in early 2010, run out of his house. Martin’s partner, a native of China, hires agents there on commission, including the companies that brought Lin and Li to Torrington。

　　“I have a lot of connections” among agencies in China, said the partner, who asked not to be identified。

　　‘Sort of Tricking Them’

　　American International Student Centers started by supplying Chinese students to Connecticut high schools. It has enrolled 14 international students at Woodstock Academy, which serves as a free public school for the area. Foreign students pay $11,201 in out-of-district tuition and $4,000 in English training if needed, said Woodstock headmaster Kim Caron. American International Student Centers, which places the students with local families or rents housing for them, charges them about $25,000 for room and board, Martin said。

　　American International’s website bills Woodstock as “formerly a Yale Prep。” Martin based the description on a Wikipedia entry stating that Woodstock had an informal connection with Yale until 1956.

　　“That’s all the Chinese need to hear,” Martin said. “I’m sort of tricking them. They’re going to a public school. But they’re happy with it。”

　　Declining Enrollment

　　Caron asked Martin this month to take down the “Yale Prep” description. “That is not accurate,” the headmaster said. “We were not ever known as Yale University Prep School。”

　　There is no record in Yale’s archives of a relationship with Woodstock, said Judith Ann Schiff, the university’s chief research archivist. Two major histories of Yale don’t mention the academy, and it was not among the 17 active prep school clubs at the university in 1910, she said。

　　The Gilbert School in Winsted, Connecticut, is in discussions with Martin to import 20 foreign students, said Superintendent David Cressy. “Enrollment has been declining,” he said. “If you don’t want to make difficult cuts in programs, you look for other sources of revenue。”

　　When his partner told him that some Chinese parents wanted to send their children to U.S. colleges as well, Martin had the idea to recruit Chinese students to UConn’s Torrington campus and put them up at the Tollgate Hill Inn in nearby Litchfield. Martin had discussed leasing the Tollgate, one of the 50 oldest inns in the U.S., from owner John Pecora, an old friend. “It’s very slow up here during the winter,” Pecora said。

　　‘Upscale’ Housing

　　Martin said he didn’t worry that the Torrington campus lacked resources for foreign students. “The Chinese only care about the ranking。” He charges more than university housing because the inn is “upscale compared to what they get at Storrs,” he said。

　　Martin broached his idea with two UConn staff members at the Torrington campus last June 23, and asked for authorization on university letterhead to solicit applicants, according to e- mails reviewed by Bloomberg News. Torrington officials referred his request to Melvin, the vice president for enrollment planning, who denied it within a month, they said。

　　Martin’s partner began approaching agents in China anyway, offering one of them $1,000 per student. The company was also purporting to be affiliated with UConn. An agent wrote the university seeking confirmation that American International Student Centers was representing it. The agent attached a letter she had received from the company. It carried the UConn seal and asserted that “special consideration will be given to students applying through the AISC for the Torrington campus。”

　　54 Credits

　　“I overstated my boundaries,” Martin said, adding that he assumed at the time that he had an agreement with UConn。

　　The letter from Martin’s company also guaranteed that Torrington students could transfer to Storrs after one year. Most students need 54 credits to transfer, or almost two years’ worth, Torrington admissions counselor Dana Forchette said。

　　Melvin shot off a warning to Martin. “As we have repeatedly indicated, the University of Connecticut hasn’t agreed to any special arrangements or partnerships with AISC, nor have we agreed to extend preferential treatment to applicants through your programs,” he wrote in an Aug. 16 letter. Use of UConn’s seal, he wrote, “should be discontinued at once。”

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