Senators seek probe of student-loan report that cleared agency contractors of cheating military serv

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http://hamptonroads.com/2015/08/senators-seek-probe-studentloan-report-cleared-agency-contractors-cheating-military-service-

Senators seek probe of student-loan report that cleared agency contractors of cheating military service members
By Danielle Douglas-Gabriel
The Washington Post
© August 6, 2015

WASHINGTON

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and other Senate Democrats are calling for an investigation into an Education Department report that cleared agency contractors of cheating military service members on their federal student loans, accusing the agency of conducting a deeply flawed review.

The request comes two months after the department announced that it had found little evidence of its student-loan servicers, the middlemen that collect and apply payments to debt, unlawfully charging high interest rates on student loans for active-duty service members.

The findings contradicted similar Justice Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. investigations that resulted in a $100 million settlement with student-loan servicer Navient a year earlier.

In their investigations, Justice and the FDIC found that Navient charged nearly 78,000 members of the military more than the 6 percent interest rate permitted by law. Yet the Education Department said less than 1 percent of the troops' files from its four largest servicers — Navient, Great Lakes, Nelnet and American Education Services — contained violations of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, a federal law that extends legal and financial protections to military personnel.