Bot Students Siphon Millions in Financial Aid from US Community Colleges (voiceofsandiego.org) 46
Fraud rings using fake "bot" students have infiltrated America's community colleges, stealing over $11 million from California's system alone in 2024. The nationwide scheme, which began in 2021, targets open-admission institutions where scammers enroll fictitious students in online courses to collect financial aid disbursements.
"We didn't used to have to decide if our students were human," said Eric Maag, who has taught at Southwestern College for 21 years. Faculty now spend hours vetting suspicious enrollees and analyzing AI-generated assignments. At Southwestern in Chula Vista, professor Elizabeth Smith discovered 89 of her 104 enrolled students were fraudulent. The California Community College system estimates 25% of all applicants statewide are bots. Community college administrators describe fighting an evolving technological battle against increasingly sophisticated fraud tactics. The fraud crisis has particularly impacted asynchronous online courses, crowding real students out of classes and fundamentally altering faculty roles.
"We didn't used to have to decide if our students were human," said Eric Maag, who has taught at Southwestern College for 21 years. Faculty now spend hours vetting suspicious enrollees and analyzing AI-generated assignments. At Southwestern in Chula Vista, professor Elizabeth Smith discovered 89 of her 104 enrolled students were fraudulent. The California Community College system estimates 25% of all applicants statewide are bots. Community college administrators describe fighting an evolving technological battle against increasingly sophisticated fraud tactics. The fraud crisis has particularly impacted asynchronous online courses, crowding real students out of classes and fundamentally altering faculty roles.
ID? (Score:5, Interesting)
"We didn't used to have to decide if our students were human,"
Last time I went to college, I was required to apply for financial aid, and that process included identity verification. Why are they even doing this themselves? Let the FAFSA process handle it.
Even CA verified residency (Score:2)
Re: Even CA verified residency (Score:3)
You don't get mailed a ballot without an ID in California. Because you can't register without proof of residency and proof of naturalized or US born citizenship. It all goes on your state ID or drivers license. You give the DMV the same info you use to apply for a passport. Even without the extra silly paperwork for Real ID (copy of a utility bill? Lololol)
Re: (Score:2)
You don't get mailed a ballot without an ID in California. Because you can't register without proof of residency and proof of naturalized or US born citizenship. It all goes on your state ID or drivers license.
Actually, it -- citizenship -- does not go on your CA ID. What goes on the RealID CA ID/DL is if you are a legal resident, not a citizen.
You give the DMV the same info you use to apply for a passport. Even without the extra silly paperwork for Real ID (copy of a utility bill? Lololol)
I think the ID requirements for CA ID/DL paperwork matches that of the passport only if you are getting a RealID. Which is optional.
Re: (Score:1)
CA fights verifying anything. We gifted over 20 billion dollars (likely north of 30 billion) of unemployment benefits to scammers.
It's a good thing we hold our elected officials accountable!
(oh, wait...)
Re: Even CA verified residency (Score:3)
"CA fights verifying anything. We gifted over 20 billion dollars (likely north of 30 billion) of unemployment benefits to scammers."
That was during COVID, when the application process was made easier, and they are continuing to pursue that money even today. Other states had similar problems, but their payouts were less because their populations are less.
Re: (Score:2)
In point of fact, they aren't allowed to require ID of any kind to vote in California (in elections governed by state law). Statewide law, and they do try to enforce it. (Huntington Beach passed, by ballot initiative, a voter ID requirement for city elections, which are, by the state constitution, entirely under the control of the city. The lawsuit to block it is . . . progressing, and likely to fail because the city attorney knows what he's doing.)
Re: (Score:2)
This is false. An ID is required to register to vote.
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But not to vote, which makes it irrelevant.
And the list of IDs required to register includes things that require no ID to get, like a utility bill, or a sample ballot you picked up out of a neighbor's trash. And you can register to vote online with a driver's license number and never show the actual license at all except the first time you vote, but only for President or Congress).
But when they are prohibited from checking ID at the time you vote, it really doesn't matter.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
I dont get what the point of it all is.
Voter fraud is an incredibly rare crime. American elections in the past , really as long as anyone of us have been alive, have consistently been found to be extraordinarily free of fraud, to the point that when it does happen it still makes the news and usually involves some dipshit double voting or whatever.
Wasting huge amounts of money on voter ID schemes whos major impact is frusturating legitimate voters away from turning up, really achieves nothing except diminish
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. This was a CCC, Yuba College in Marysville CA.
Re: (Score:1)
I'd not be surprised if they're utilizing the same "loopholes" created by the Biden admin that brought a huge number of illegals to the US and gave them IDs/exemptions to proper immigration procedure. They were giving out IDs to literally everyone they brought without any proof... it'd have been easy enough to buy those IDs from people, or simply intercept the procedure for some cash - it's not like they were scrupulous, moral actors.
I'd bet anything that's one of the approaches they used, since getting fin
Re: (Score:2)
I'd not be surprised if they're utilizing the same "loopholes" created by the Biden admin that brought a huge number of illegals to the US and gave them IDs/exemptions to proper immigration procedure. They were giving out IDs to literally everyone they brought without any proof... it'd have been easy enough to buy those IDs from people, or simply intercept the procedure for some cash - it's not like they were scrupulous, moral actors.
I'd bet anything that's one of the approaches they used, since getting financial aid does require an ID.
If you're going to spout lie after lie after lie, you need to have a verifiable source with the bullshit you spout.
They were giving out IDs to literally everyone they brought without any proof.
Looks like "they" learned from you.
Re: (Score:2)
"Citation needed".
Or do you just pull accusation out of your ass?
Meanwhile, all those immigrants... so, tell us, do you do stoop labor in the fields? Or work construction?
Of course not. This falls under the heading of "if they're rapists and murderers, and coming here and stealing our jobs, exactly what is it that you do for a living?"
Re: ID? (Score:2)
"They were giving out IDs to literally everyone they brought without any proof..."
Who told you that? Why did you believe it?
Re: (Score:3)
If you are one of the few people whose driver license has yet to show up in a Russian forum, do not count on your luck continuing. Between the leaks from medical breaches, pharmacy breaches, insurance company breaches and rental car
Re:ID? (Score:4, Informative)
No problem, ID.ME refuses to verify me even with pictures of my ID and BC, probably due to prior identity theft - where someone bought a car in Nevada City, CA with their evidence of identity being a check cashing card with my SSN written on it in pen. A court in Nevada City decided to award a judgement against me based on that evidence, which I know because I requested the proof of debt from the collector. They then wanted me to mail them a photo of my CA DL, which I refused to do because I didn't trust them for reasons which should be obvious (the debt was obviously bad but they tried to collect it anyway, which means they were scammers at best) and eventually it dropped off my record (they must have written it off) and now my credit rating is around 790 thanks to a year of having a crappy CC with an absurd interest rate. Now it's slightly less crappy and the interest rate is only typically shit...
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I do pay the full balance every month. In fact, I pay it as I go in order to keep my utilization down, my CC is from my CU so I just fire up the app and make a transfer every few days.
Re: (Score:2)
ID.ME couldn't verify me either. The "verification questions" they used on the first pass seem pulled from Equifax, who have also never been able to verify me. The give me a list of companies and ask which one I have requested a credit account with. The correct answer being "none of the above", which is not an option.
As best I can tell, it's something my parents signed up for 20 years ago that was somehow added to my name. They have had dealings with some of the businesses mentioned. Although I have never a
Re: (Score:2)
There needs to be some kind of identifying information just to be able to send the student aid money to somebody. Why isn't that information used to prevent this?
Re: (Score:2)
Spot on. Whatever they are doing to verify students is not working. If they are paying 3rd party services then they should hold them accountable. If they are doing it internally then the school (and the financial aid admins) should be held accountable.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe I'm misremembering, but I thought my financial aid went directly to my tuition. I never touched it. You can't steal the money if you never have it. If they're directly handing it to the students, that sounds like a design flaw.
Re: (Score:2)
There are different types of grants, which are disbursed in different ways. Most of them go straight to the school to cover education costs. Some of them are given directly to students so they can cover living costs.
Deport them (Score:2)
Send these criminal bot students to El Salvador. Problem solved. You might want to remove their QR tattoos so pesky judges can recall them.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm...
A quick WHOIS shows ns entries of constellix.com, which is decidedly not Cloudflare. In fact, they're a competing company that offers similar services.
Re: (Score:2)
No, they offer complementary services [archive.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm... Yet, I'm not seeing any CF here.
I'll assume that I'm missing something.
Re: (Score:2)
Bitch about anything (Score:4, Funny)
People complained that AI bots were "stealing" from content creators by using their materials for training models.
Now bot owners are sending their bots to college to learn, just like humans have to do, and people are still bitching.
Some people just can't be pleased.
Cash and rosy demographics? Irresistible. (Score:2)
From the article: professors feel the college’s administration has done too little to get the crisis under control. Years have passed, but the problem has just gotten worse.
Of course. Why investigate? The more money, the more administrators. Perfect!
It probably also conveniently skews the demographic numbers: a bot can assume any identity after all. Nirvana!
$11 Million? (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong, any amount of fraud is bad but $11mil? Considering the size of California's collegiate system and the amount of money that flows through it this doesnt seem like very much money to me.
Re:$11 Million? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's 11 million out of a budget of 19 billion California community college budget. That's 0.058%. In business, if you have less than 0.1% losses by fraud that's considered outstanding financial control.
Of course, that's not all the potential fraud in the system, I'm just saying finding 11 billion dollars of novel fraud is not prima facie evidence that the system is poorly run from a financial standpoint given the enormous size of the system.
If you just focus on financial aid, the state disburses $2.8 billion to community college students. 11 million amounts to a fraud rate of 0.39% in that program. This is still fairly low, although it's in the "room for improvement" range. That's a normal place for a program to be when a new paradigm for fraud emerges: when that happens it's time to put in more controls.
Re: (Score:2)
First prove you're able to responsibly handle 19 billion, then entrusting you with 11 million is a no-brainer.
Re: $11 Million? (Score:2)
Over 115,000 students received aid in the 2022-2023 school year. That's $95.65 per student. Is that a lot of money? I'm still not giving it to you, mind.
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Thanks for the data. I didn't have time to look anything up so it's nice to see my assumption was correct.
Bots attending college to take our jobs (Score:2)
I guess the bots are attending college right now. Once they graduate from college, they will be ready to take our jobs from us. BTW, I hear the AI bots guzzle a lot of energy. I guess they need that $11M scholarship to pay for their electric bills. I think it's fair enough. No scam.
Re: Bots attending college to take our jobs (Score:2, Funny)
Online courses (Score:2)
scammers enroll fictitious students in online courses to collect financial aid disbursements.
Just limit financial aid for non in person students to free tuition for the course plus maybe a credit applicable (only) to the purchase of course materials.
Trust but Verify (Score:4, Insightful)
Make them show up in person *at least* once. What they are doing is ridiculous, and could be solved almost overnight.