California Community Colleges Flag Broad Attempted Financial Aid Scam 

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September 2, 2021 astatine 9:02 am

STOCKTON (AP/CBS13) — Officials person detected much than 65,000 fake fiscal assistance applications to California assemblage colleges successful what is believed to beryllium a monolithic attempted fiscal assistance scam.

The Los Angeles Times reports Thursday that the fraudulent applications were filed astatine astir of the system’s 116 campuses connected behalf of first-time applicants who were older than 30 and earned little than $40,000. A pupil assistance authoritative detected the applications connected a regular cheque of national fiscal assistance records portion module members were flagging antithetic surges successful people enrollment that they suspected could beryllium driven by fake students oregon bots.

“We were benignant of scratching our heads going, ‘Did oregon didn’t 60,000 other older big students truly effort to use to assemblage colleges present successful the past fewer months?'” said Patrick Perry, manager of policy, probe and information for the California Student Aid Commission, who alerted assemblage officials to the contented past week.

Since then, Perry said the fig of suspected fake applications has exceeded 65,000. He said helium believes the occupation was caught earlier important amounts of assistance were distributed to scammers.

Officials astatine California Community Colleges declined to accidental whether fiscal assistance was disbursed to fake students. The system, which has received much than $1.6 cardinal successful exigency COVID-19 alleviation for debased income students, is investigating.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General is besides investigating and declined comment.

The fake applications were detected astatine 105 campuses. The largest numbers were reported astatine Cerritos, Pasadena, Chaffey, Merced and Antelope Valley.

Two professors astatine San Joaquin Delta College successful Stockton said they became suspicious upon seeing their online people enrollment surge successful aboriginal August, including galore students who were taking classes unrelated to their major. They aboriginal noticed galore of the suspicious students didn’t person telephone numbers oregon had out-of-state country codes.

“It looked similar we were making a comeback successful spite of the pandemic,” said Tara Cuslidge-Staiano, a journalism prof who believes much than two-thirds of her 60 people members are bots. “The hardest portion of each of this is that we’re not doing arsenic good arsenic we thought we were doing.”

Valerie Lundy-Wagner, the colleges’ interim vice chancellor of integer innovation and infrastructure, announced stricter information measures Monday including the required monthly reporting of suspected and confirmed incidents of registration and fiscal assistance fraud.

About 20% of caller postulation connected the colleges’ main leafage for online applications was “malicious and bot-related,” she said, adding that overmuch of this postulation was detected by bundle installed by the assemblage strategy successful July.

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