For anyone who has been following the case of Tri-Valley University, The Chronicle of Higher Education has an in depth report on how a so-called "sham university" managed to get on the list of SEVIS-approved schools...and whether other schools in the U.S. may also be operating on the fringes of the law:
Other colleges—most of them unaccredited—exploit byzantine federal regulations, enrolling almost exclusively foreign students and charging them upward of $3,000 for a chance to work legally in the United States. They flourish in California and Virginia, where regulations are lax, and many of their practices—for instance, holding some classes on only three weekends per semester—are unconventional, to say the least. These colleges usher in thousands of foreign students and generate millions of dollars in profits because they have the power, bestowed by the U.S. government, to help students get visas.