The former director of the Commercial Driving Program at Blue Ridge Community College pleaded guilty Thursday to four counts of embezzlement, admitting he bilked the school out of $61,846.
In Augusta County Circuit Court, Rupen Shah, the chief deputy commonwealth's attorney for Augusta County, laid out the specifics of the case where R. Michael Eller scammed the school for 14 years.
Shah said the embezzlement schemes stretched from 2002 to 2014, more than half of Eller's career at the school, and said some of it involved Bosnian immigrants from Richmond. The Bosnians would meet Eller through a middle man who went by the name of "Jamal," according to S.V. Fielding, a special agent with Virginia State Police. Eller would accept discounted cash payments "under the table" from the prospective students, Fielding said, and the Bosnians, not familiar with the educational system in the United States, wouldn't enroll at BRCC but would deal directly with Eller.
