Taxpayers are being fleeced out of money by bots and online scammers
A new financial aid tool is projected to save taxpayers $1 billion by stopping “ghost student” fraud, the Trump administration announced.
For several years now, experts have raised concerns about the proliferation of ghost students. This refers to online scammers enrolling in classes to fraudulently obtain financial aid money. The issue has been particularly pronounced in California community colleges, but Minnesota universities have also grappled with the issue.
“High-risk applicants” will now be asked “to provide government-issued identification before accessing federal student aid, including Pell Grants and loans,” when applying through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid portal, Fox News reported.
FAFSA is the primary tool used to determine eligibility for financial aid.
“The Education Department estimates its efforts to identify and deny aid to fraudulent students will save taxpayers over $1 billion during this year’s FAFSA cycle, with the tool already screening 50,000 applications as of Monday afternoon,” Fox News reported.
The White House sent a statement to The College Fix about the new initiative.
“Instead of student aid and education grants going to students who deserve it, corrupt Democrats and the inept bureaucrat class of the Biden Administration allowed it to flow straight into the pockets of fraudsters for years,” a spokesperson for Vice President JD Vance stated via email.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon also commented to Fox News:
This new fraud detection tool will stop fraud at the start of the process, before money goes out the door, strengthening the integrity of our programs and expanding opportunity for students who depend on these resources to finance their postsecondary education.
The Trump administration blamed President Joe Biden for not stopping the problem.
The Biden Department of Education “removed key verification safeguards, diverted resources away from fraud prevention, and required less than one percent of students to verify their identity following the submission of the FAFSA,” the Trump administration stated.
“These policies led to institutions across the country coming under siege by highly sophisticated fraud rings, ‘ghost students,’ and AI bots,” the Dept. of Education stated.
California community college Professor Kim Rich meanwhile has been at the forefront of sounding the alarm about this problem.
The Pierce College criminal justice scholar identified that 24 students in her 40-student class were fake, as The Fix previously reported.
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