22 Russian Students Stranded in Florida

[russian33]

A small Florida town is pitching in to help a group of stranded Russian students after 18 of them were found living in two cramped, unfurnished apartments with almost no food or money.

The group of 22 students paid several thousand dollars apiece to work this summer in the United States under the U.S. State Department's Summer Work/Travel Exchange Visitor Program. But they have been left with no jobs or lodging in an apparent misunderstanding with their employer.

Authorities of St. Augustine Beach learned of the students' plight last Friday, when an elderly woman saw several of the female students wandering around lost in the rain.

http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/06/11/004.html

[1monster]

1. St. Augustine is my town and this is a BIG story here.

It's been on the front page of the newspaper for at least two days. We hate it when people use our beautiful area to scam others out of their money. There were twenty-two girls who paid $400 apiece for housing. Even here in St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach, where the rental prices average between $800 and $1,000 per month, the girls could have been placed no more than four to a furnished two-bedroom apartment with the money they all put up.

It is interesting to note that the woman who placed eighteen of them in two apartments only got her business license last month. A lot of us are hoping she has criminal charges pressed against her for her part in this scam.