A shady, shuttered tech bootcamp may be sneaking back online
A year and a half ago, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) worked with state attorneys general to shut down Prehired, a shady tech sales bootcamp program that a court said deceptively saddled students with millions of dollars in loans. Now, as the federal watchdog is being dismantled by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a consumer advocacy group says the company is relaunching its old pitch under a new name: FastTrack.
Prehired was an online program that offered training for entry-level software sales roles, promising that students would only have to pay the course’s cost once they landed a job that paid more than $60,000 within 12 months of finishing. In a 2023 complaint, the CFPB and 11 states claimed that these were deceptively marketed loans with buried terms that left students on the hook even if they didn’t get a job. After students had signed up, Prehired allegedly claimed they’d benefit from converting these loans into settlement agreements with the company, which actually made it harder for them to fight debt collectors.
In November 2023, a court approved an order shutting down Prehired and permanently banning it from offering sim …