Community Colleges offer a cheap and flexible option when it comes to a student’s education. However, institutions are being met with an expensive problem: the pain of financial aid fraud, where scammers submit fraudulent applications under stolen identities.
“The attempts that we’re seeing are students who are submitting fraudulent stolen identities, fraudulent information on the FAFSA, and they’re attempting to enroll in classes to receive federal grant funds and then drop classes,” said Tom Billbruck, COC Associate Dean of Financial Services.
These scammers are known as Pell Runners, as they collect Pell grants from the federal government and then run off with the money. The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office has reported that a total of $5 million has been lost to these scammers alone.
These fraudsters particularly target online courses, where it’s harder to tell if you’re a real human being or not. These classes appear to have a full capacity, but by the time the course begins, all of these scammers vanish. What’s left behind are very few well-intentioned students.
This is a costly problem with a difficult solution.
We require suspected fraudulent applicants to come to campus in person and submit photo identification so that we can verify their identity and allow them to move forward through the application process,” said Billbruck.
According to COC financial aid, the number of fraudulent applications that come through measures around 2-3%, a small percentage; still, the impact is significant enough to require immediate action for Canyons.
