misuse of federal student aid was first publicly disclosed in 2009. When the official results were released in 2011, Senator Tom Harkin said this audit "reveals the same troubling pattern of for-profit colleges' taking advantage of students and taxpayers." The Department of Education has not yet responded to the findings. The audit was the subject of a U.S. Senate committee hearing on March 10, 2011. A Bloomberg News report revealed that Ashford was recruiting disabled soldiers at the Wounded Warrior Battalion at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, including a Marine with a traumatic brain injury. 2011 Iowa Attorney General investigation and US Senate hearings According to a February 15, 2011, filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ashford University and its parent company, Bridgepoint Education, received a letter from the Iowa Attorney General's office on February 9, 2011, requesting "documents and detailed information" from January 1, 2008, to the present to determine if Ashford's business practices possibly violated the state's Consumer Fraud Act. On March 10, 2011, Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) chaired a hearing of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that examined a case study of Ashford's parent company, which has experienced near-exponential profit growth in the last few years despite low graduation rates. Bridgepoint owns two universities that it purchased when both were near bankruptcy, Ashford University in Iowa and the University of the Rockies in Colorado. When it purchased Ashford University in 2005, it had fewer than 300 students but in 2010 it claimed to have over 78,000 students, 99% of which were online. Senator Harkin took issue with success of the company saying that while Bridgepoint may have had record profits the students were not succeeding. According to information provided by Senator Harkin in the committee hearing, 63% of students who enrolled at Ashford University during the 2008–2009 school year withdrew before completion of their prospective program. Senator Harkin pointed out that Bridgepoint recorded more than $216 million in profits in 2010; of which 86.5 percent of its revenues come from federal funds. In reference to the dependence of Bridgepoint on public funds, Senator Harkin was quoted as saying, "I think this is a scam, an absolute scam." Kathleen Tighe, an inspector general with the U.S. Department of Education, testified at the hearing that in an audit of Ashford, she discovered Ashford was improperly distributing student aid to students. "Seventy-five percent of the improper disbursements to