Thomas James Kirk II (also known as Thomas McPherson) operated several fraudulent higher education organizations (diploma mills), including LaSalle University in Mandeville, Louisiana (not associated with the Lasallian educational institutions), the University of San Gabriel Valley, and Bienville University. Kirk's "LaSalle University" was shut down in 1996 following a raid by the FBI. Kirk was indicted for tax fraud in 1996 and, after a plea agreement, was sentenced to five years in U.S. federal prison. Kirk later died in January 2008. History The University of San Gabriel Valley was a correspondence law school based in California. At the time, California's regulations allowed for authorization of a degree program if the prospective operator provided a list of faculty and courses and demonstrated $50,000 in assets, and Southland met California's requirements. In 1984 Time reported that a former Southland registrar said that the school had granted a bachelor's degree in engineering based on the student's short résumé and had awarded a law degree to a real estate agent on the basis of an exam designed to test legal assistants. Time quoted Kirk, who claimed he no longer operated Southland, as saying he "had no interest as an educator," but the school "was a good way to make money." Having renamed it LaSalle University, Kirk later moved it to Mandeville, Louisiana. According to John Bear, a renowned authority on diploma mills who consulted for the FBI, Kirk set up "World Christian Church" in Louisiana, placed the university in the ownership of the "church" to claim religious exemption from state education laws, and claimed to have taken a vow of poverty. In the mid-1990s, LaSalle provoked the attention of authorities because of evidence that government workers had been awarded promotions and salary increases based on fraudulent advanced degrees. According to a prosecutor with the Attorney General's office, more than a dozen known diploma mills had been set up in Louisiana, where the laws were particularly lenient. Federal investigators estimated that LaSalle, alone, had issued in excess of 40,000 fake diplomas, the bulk of them to government employees. In fact, LaSalle's sales and marketing materials highlighted the fact that many of its graduates occupied high positions in government. The school was shut down after a July 1996 raid by the FBI, U.S. postal inspectors, and the Internal Revenue Service. According to John Bear, the U.S. Attorney wrote to every person in the LaSalle files, officially