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This story was originally published by CalmattersS Register about their ballots.
For years, fraudsters have directed colleges in the community throughout the country, posing as students to steal money from scholarships or state financial assistance.
Recent state reports suggest that the problem is getting worse, and college executives say they are worried that Trump’s administration’s abbreviations to the US Department of Education can impede the prevention and investigations of fraud.
In 2021, the California Colleges offices reported that About 20% of college candidates were probably fake. In January 2024 the state stated that it was up to about 25%.
It is now about 34%, according to the latest data from the last calendar year. “These are all who are stopped,” says John Hats, an executive vice -center of the data team in the Chancellor Office.
The fraudsters who are not stopped have stolen millions of dollars to taxpayers. CalMatters reported that these fake students had received more than $ 5 million from the federal government and nearly $ 1.5 million from the country, according to anonymous reports that colleges submitted to the state from September 2021 to December 2023.
The faculty says they are angry with work as detectives, trying to unfold which students are real. Fraudsters are said to be increasingly relying on artificial intelligence to penetrate the hours using tools like Chatgpt to present as students. Students say these scammers occupy coveted places and prevent them from enrolling in classes they need to finish.
In the last 12 months, colleges have reported that they have given more than $ 10 million federal dollars to counterfeit students and over $ 3 million in state money. The data from the first few months of 2025 show that colleges have already distributed more than $ 3 million in federal aid and over $ 700,000 in state dollars.
The scope of fraud is “relatively small,” says Chris Ferguson, CEO of the Chancellor, especially compared to approximately $ 1.7 billion, federal aid and $ 1.5 billion in state aid provided to students in the California Community. He also said that colleges were likely to have improved their ability to detect fraud in time by potentially inflating reporting numbers.
State legislators have allocated approximately $ 150 million to cybersecurity since 2022, and the office office has introduced numerous technology companies – including ID.ME, N2N and Lexisnexis – to help students. But Hats said that none of these interventions will never completely eliminate fraud, because every time the state has improved in the fight against fraud, bad actors adapt – the technological equivalent of “”The Red Queen’s hypothesisS “
College leaders also rely on the Federal Education Department to help find fraudsters. The department is widely responsible for the administration of federal financial assistance and for the prevention and investigation of related fraud. The service, which administers federal aid, has lost about half of its employees through abbreviations, voluntary redemptions and retirement. California General Prosecutor Rob Bont has recently joined other General Democratic Lawyers by judging the Trump administration for these abbreviations, claiming They violate the US Constitution.
Although technically not part of the case or redundancies, the service of the General Inspector of the educational department responsible for detecting fraud has also lost staff due to purchase and early retirement. Since October 1, the service of the General Inspector has lost “more than 20% of its staff,” said Catherine Grant, a spokesman for the service, including “experienced auditors and investigators”.
“As for how these changes in the staff affect the general inspector’s ability to investigate students to help students in California, we are committed to fighting fraud with the help of student assistance wherever we find it,” Grant said. “But we are limited by what we can do based on our limited resources.”
Fake students using AI
In 2023, librarian Heather Dodge began to notice something strange for students who took her online research course at Berkeley City College. To contact students and make the class more engaging, Dodge said she has always started the course by asking students to send a video posing using their webcam or iPhone.
“It’s a very low bar,” she said, but “I started to notice that there would be a handful of students who would not present this task in the first week.” First, she will send them a message and then, if they have not replied, she will release them from the class.
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While the teacher drops a student over a period of time, in this case the first week of enrollment in this class is invalid and the student cannot seek financial assistance for this course. However, after the first week, it is difficult to remove them.
She said this semester that she started with 35 students. During the first week, she kicked out several students who did not send video, but four students found a solution by sending her a written answer. The text was generic, she said, "like something Chatgpt would write," but she wasn't ready to release them from the course.
"Do these students have technological challenges? Maybe they didn't have a webcam, maybe they didn't understand the task. It was really difficult to unfold what was happening to them."
Dodge said he was also worried about how he looked to miss so many students in the class. Community funding is largely attached to enrollment and the Peralta Community College area where he studies Dodge is The suffering from enrollment decreases and faces major financial losses. "If they see that I have a class that starts with 35 students and ends with 15, it looks awful."
Throughout the class, the four suspicious students continued to present general tasks, and in the end she said she turned to each of them to set up a meeting to increase. Two never answered. A student met her, but said their camera and microphone were not working, so they sent text messages. The other student appeared on a camera, but could hardly speak English, Dodge said. Every time she asks Zoom, the student will silently wait for their phone to translate. She said the student's answers "are basically meaningless."
Bots present for homeless students, former foster youth
By law, community colleges in California are obliged to accept legal students, and state leaders have spent decades trying to facilitate students enrollment. Students from the College in Community must sign a declaration, swear the truth of their information, but otherwise many colleges do not independently check the student's address or identity.
"We serve a large number of students who may not have documentation for various reasons," says Hats, with the State Chancellor, as students who are homeless, those who are undocumented, and those who leave the foster care system or have no connection with their parents.
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The State Chancellor service has entered into a contract with ID.ME to provide a check through the Portal for Application to the State College, but students are not obliged to use it. However, local regions may impose more stringent requirements.
For some time, Nicole Albo-Lopez, the Deputy Cancer of the Los Angeles Community area, said her area was more lenient with college candidates who look like stray or former foster youth, but "Bots have come up with this."
Last year, she said the area had cleared approximately a quarter of all class registrations due to potentially fraudulent activity and changing their policy, requiring almost all students to check their identity. He also paid Socure, an identity check company, just over $ 250,000, to help detect fraud.
However, attempts at fraud continue. As fires were raging through Los Angeles County, and colleges in the community raised millions to support students who lost their homes, the fraudsters slipped. Enrollment in East Los Angeles College suddenly doubled this month, but many students were probably fake, Albo-Lopez said. "People probably think there will be fire."
In the San Diego Community Community, where fraud cases are also on the rise, the dean of the student services Victor Devor said his area had found potentially deceptive students who had passed the ID.ME check process. He now said that his area shields all candidates, even those who have checked their identity through id.me.
"When you direct less resources to combat fraud ... you will get more fraud."
John Hats, Executive Vice -Central of the Data Team in the Office
Dodge said she had asked the administrators in the area of Peralta Community College for help with all four suspicious students in her class, as she no longer had the authority to release them from the course. The district eventually removed the two students who agreed to meet her over Zoom, but she said the other two students - those who had never reacted - were still in the course. Mark Johnson, a spokesman for the district, said these two students were "examined at the time".
Nevertheless, Dodge said that both students had failed the class.
FBI is investigating fraud
Colleges are obliged to submit monthly reports on suspicious applications to both the state and the US Department of Education, although colleges say that the federal government rarely informed them of what it does with this information.
By requesting public records, CalMatters found that in June 2022, the US Department of Education was opened an investigation into a Los Angeles Harbor College Ring and West Los Angeles, where the scammers used the identity of at least 57 years to steal more than $ 1.1 million in Federal In another note, the Ministry of Education signals the FBI of a fraud ring related to the Los Angeles City College, who enrolls people in classes "with the sole purpose of receiving money to recover financial aid," potentially stealing over $ 1 million using the identity of 70 different people.
Grant said the education department is still working on Los Angeles fraud investigations, but declined to comment on them, as the department has a policy to retain information on ongoing investigative confidential investigations.
Since 2020, the education department has also been investigating financial aid payments at Merced College College, Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz County and Siskiyous College in the weed. Another four colleges in the California Community have contacted the fraud or concerns about the abuse of federal assistance, according to the records of the department.
Community colleges say they want to hear more than the federal government about his fraud investigations, and some say that silence is disturbing, especially now that the education department has lost so many employees.
For Hetts, with the offices of office, this is a direct connection: "When you are focusing less resources towards the fight against fraud ... you will get more fraud."
This article was Originally Published on CalMatters and was reissued under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivatives License.
