A California public school district allegedly issued fraudulent high school diplomas to students living in China through a secret “sister school” partnership, a sweeping new audit has found. The more than 1,000-page review also uncovered potential bribery, possible national security concerns, and evidence that pages about Taiwan had been torn from classroom textbooks.
The Val Verde Unified School District in Riverside, California, ran a partnership program with Pegasus California School in Qingdao, China, between 2016 and 2020. According to the audit commissioned by Riverside County Superintendent Dr. Edwin Gomez, VVUSD gave unauthorized diplomas to Chinese students who were nonresidents and who may not have met legal or residency requirements.
“Our audit raises serious concerns about academic integrity, taxpayer fraud, and may even implicate national security,” Stephen G. Larson, a partner at Larson LLP, told Fox News Digital. “We found that a California public school district improperly issued diplomas to students in China, and the broader record shows those California credentials may have been used to create false legitimacy for students seeking entry into American universities.”
The diplomas were apparently not just symbolic. Chinese students who received them were allegedly promised acceptance to top U.S. universities, allowing them to jump the admissions line ahead of American-born applicants.
Teachers from the California district traveled to China to teach at Pegasus. They were taken off the VVUSD payroll, but Pegasus compensated them with salaries, full medical and dental benefits, and fully furnished apartments with utilities and meals covered.
The audit found those teachers were often not appropriately credentialed, raising questions about what, exactly, was being taught.
The Taiwan textbook detail stands out. Auditors found that “pages regarding Taiwan had been ripped out of the history books” used in the China-based classrooms. The removal of Taiwan-related content from materials used in a California-credentialed program echoes Chinese Communist Party censorship practices, which routinely erase Taiwan’s status as a separate government.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican running for governor, said the scheme reflects a broader culture of institutional corruption in California.
“This school in Riverside County shows how corrupt these people really are, where they couldn’t care less about taxpayer money, they couldn’t care less about their own schools,” Bianco told Fox News Digital. “And so they benefit themselves by gaining, we have no idea how much money, by fraudulently giving diplomas to kids living in China.”
Bianco added that while Chinese students were being handed California credentials, local kids got nothing. “These kids from China now come into the U.S. and get accepted into these colleges and universities, and California students get nothing,” he said.
The audit also identified “some evidence of potential bribes and/or kickbacks in the form of direct and indirect financial benefits” tied to the relationship between district leadership and the Qingdao school. Investigators also raised the possibility that the arrangement may have influenced past superintendent elections in southern California.
Gomez said the findings “merit further review by appropriate authorities.” Pegasus California School no longer appears on the district’s website, and the school’s news section hasn’t been updated since September 2024.
The partnership program ran for four years before it was shuttered, but details only emerged after a 2021 Business Insider investigation prompted Gomez to commission the formal audit.
