I attended school at Hamilton College starting fall quarter of 2009 and graduating in April 2000. All my education funding went directly to the school and was never in my hands. During the course of my education I did question the financial aid officer a few times over what appeared to be discrepancies. Upon graduating in April 2000. I applied for deferments. I notice that deferments is plural, this is because they kept losing my paperwork. Now this college promises Job placement services... I want to state at this time I have never had any job placement services, nor have I ever worked in this field. My education is nothing more than an expensive piece of paper that keeps kicking me in the butt. So let me go on. Supposedly my deferment was received. I say supposedly because at this point and time I honestly am questioning everything. Around 2004 the IRS garnishes my wages for the Department of Education. Now remember I am supposed to be under a deferment still. Than the IRS offsets my income tax for these loans. Now the company I was working for at the time of these garnishments and offsets was trying to find a legal way to fire me because I have a hearing disability. This company had a practice of hiring people with disabilities but making sure they were out the door within 90 days. I had slipped through the cracks. So by the time they had found out I had a disability it was "war" at work. Every day was a battle to keep my job. So during this time I was trusting the company to keep garnishing my wages. I just recently found out that apparently during the last 6 months of my employment they were not garnishing my wages, they had flagrantly disregarded that order. So after my termination from this company, I was in a civil rights case for 3 years. During that 3 years I had a hard time finding steady work. And quite honestly the last thing I was thinking about was student loans. Finally in 2009 I began working for a company that hires people with disabilities. Great company. Prior to starting work with this company I and my DARS representative had begun looking back into my student loans. My wife had called the Hamilton College, now called Kaplan University and asked for a copy of all my Promissory Notes. We did this because I had explained how there had been discrepancies while I was attending school. According to the Department of Education I have five (5) Promissory Notes. So my wife requested a copy of those and all payments made, and any other information they had on file. I began work. As soon as I began work all those Promissory notes went into Default status. I guess I am confused how it was not default status until they realized I had a job. Anyway we waited for the paperwork. It arrived and there was a copy of three (3) Promissory notes only, and a paper stating I had Pell Grants totaling over $5000. Now the total of my education was a little over $9000. Like I said earlier, all my loans and grants went straight into the financial aids hands. I did not use any of this money for living expenses, it all was paid directly to the college. I worked full time as well as attending college full time to pay for myself. Of the (3) Promissory Notes, my wife noticed immediately that one Promissory note was scratched out in a couple of places and that the initials placed next to the money amount that was scratched out was not how I initial documents. She also questioned my signature because it was slanted to the left and the copy appears like someone had whited out underneath this signature and the top of it is somewhat cut off, almost like it was traced or copied and pasted. Right away my wife was suspicious. So she called the college again and explained that two of the Promissory notes were not included. They explained that they requested this information from the Department of Education. So my wife contacted the Department of Education requesting the other two Promissory Notes. Now in the mean time because I am in "default status" now, I began getting collection calls over my student loans. So my wife asked them also for a copy of everything. Everything being: All promissory notes, all monies paid into this account and any and all paperwork available. Now the collection agency also requests this from the Department of Education. So all in all we ended up requesting this information (5) times. And to date, no one has ever been able to produce those missing (2) promissory notes. So now after months of threats from the Collection Companies and us awaiting paperwork, my wife calls the Department of Education, documenting each call, and eventually recording all calls between them, us and even the collection agencies. And we find out that we can contest the loan with what I call "a fraudalent signature" but we have to submit handwriting examples from one year prior to that loan being taken out, and one year after that loan being taken out. So we think okay we can do that... what we did not know until later is they only accept certain documents. So we are still working on that. Now by now we are talking about fighting all of this for approximately (9) months now. Each time we would talk to someone from the Department of Education we would get another story. Each time we talked to the Collection Agency we would get another story. So between stories and threats we honestly did not know what was the truth. So let's go back to the missing Promissory notes. In the course of all this my wife was told by the Department of Education that if we did not receive the Promissory notes in the next (6) weeks to call them back and they would ask the Lender to than supply copies and if the Lender did not have a copy than the loans would be removed. So we waited for the 6 weeks. We received no Promissory notes, so my wife calls back and explains to the next operator at the Department of Education that we have not received them and she would like them to now go to the Lender. At this point they tell her that it doesn't work that way.. surprise surprise. They explain that we can apply for a discharge and explain our reasons. Now in the course of waiting for this paperwork to apply for this discharge it comes to our attention via a very helpful operator at the Department of Education that these two loans that we are missing the paperwork on, were taken out AFTER I had already graduated from college. Now I have certified copies of my transcripts. However also in the course of this whole investigation, Hamilton College has "attendance records" of me barely attending classes for which these loans were taken out. Now the interesting thing about these classes is 1. They look like they are first year classes 2. They were not classes required for my degree 3. One was a class I would never have taken. 4. I barely attended these classes according to their attendance records and I received no credits for these classes. 5. I was working elsewhere at the time and after feeling that Hamilton College had been a waste of my time I had had no desire to continue my education. I needed to get ahead not behind. Anyway the paperwork for discharge did come in the mail. I did fill it out and re-submit it. Now according to the Department of Education the minute they receive that paperwork, all my loans were to be pulled from the Collection Company and put into an investigation process. All collection calls were to stop. I get called by this Collection Company numerous times a day while I am at work. They are threatening to garnish my wages. They have already offset my income tax. At this point you may ask about what has been paid in prior to this. Well the Department of Education sent me out a letter stating that they had no such records. So I have spent the last month fighting with the company I worked for (mentioned above) to get a copy of the garnishment and all wages garnished from my paycheck back than. This is how I found out that they did not completely comply with the garnishment. Maybe. I say maybe because I have my paycheck stubs in storage somewhere I do not remember a time when I was not garnished, so I am currently looking for those to see if my stubs match their records. In the mean time I have submitted all proof of payments made on these loans to the Department of Education. I have also asked that the loan with the scratch outs and contested signature be discharged based on evidence I presented showing how I initial official documents and based upon paperwork that says if the paper is unreadable or has too many scratch outs or no initials it be discharged. Now at this point my loan is up to over 13, 000. Each time it is given to a Collection Agency more fee's are tacked on. So basically everything that I have paid until this point have been tossed away. We have tried to consult a lawyer about all of this but have not found a Lawyer that handles these kind of problems, so my wife has spent her free time studying and trying to find out what to do. Last week she got an email from change.org, this is a petition site where another individual had brought for a petition against Kaplan University. Same practices, same fraudulent loans and this individual had uncovered how the company that owns the University has been covering these practices up for years. They have literally targeted low income individuals, un-wed mothers, and minorities knowing that statistically the odds of them finishing college or paying off their debt was slim. Apparently these companies will get their money one way or another. So anyone out there that has been burned by a financial aid, the College, Kaplan, Hamilton or any of these small Universities, or maybe even the Government, please respond back... We would love to hear from you. And will be glad to share anything we have learned and hope someone can help us also.