Mysterious circumstances indeed.

After taking $80K+ for each student, the owner of their flight school, Minh Duc Nguyen, takes off without a trace after closing the school. Of course, there's FAA involved as well, taking away away the school's certification shorter before this all went down.

On Yelp, seems like the school, Ahart Aviation, went down the toilet after the current owner buys it.

21 of the pilots were sent by VJ.

VN is apparently stepping in to help all the students out by offering to pay half the tuition at another flight school. That won't help a lot of them in the end.

The Alameda County DA is looking for Nguyen, probably the FAA too.

Sounds like the guy bought the school for the sole purpose of exacting tuition fees from these students... the plan was probably to disappear from the beginning.

My full blog post:
79 Pilot Trainees in Limbo in California After Their Flight School Closes
Disclosure per FT rules: The link above goes to a blog, VNAFlyer, to which I am a regular contributor.