By Adam EchelmanCalMatters
This story was initially printed by CalMatters. Enroll for his or her newsletters.
For years, scammers have focused neighborhood schools throughout the state, posing as college students as a way to steal cash from scholarships or authorities monetary support.
Current state studies recommend the issue is getting worse, and school leaders say they’re nervous that the Trump administration’s cuts to the U.S. Division of Training may hamper fraud prevention and investigations.
In 2021, the California Group Faculties Chancellor’s Workplace reported that about 20% of school candidates had been doubtless faux. In January 2024, the state stated it was as much as about 25%.
Now it’s round 34%, in keeping with the latest knowledge from the final calendar 12 months. “Those are all the ones that are stopped,” stated John Hetts, govt vice chancellor for the info crew on the chancellor’s workplace.
The scammers that aren’t stopped have stolen hundreds of thousands in taxpayer {dollars}. CalMatters reported that these faux college students acquired greater than $5 million from the federal authorities and almost $1.5 million from the state, in keeping with anonymized studies that schools submitted to the state from September 2021 by means of December 2023.
School say they’re exasperated from working as detectives, making an attempt to suss out which college students are actual. They are saying scammers are more and more counting on synthetic intelligence to infiltrate lessons, utilizing instruments like ChatGPT to pose as college students. College students say these fraudsters are taking coveted seats and stopping them from enrolling in lessons they should graduate.
Within the final 12 months, schools reported giving greater than $10 million in federal {dollars} to faux college students and over $3 million in state cash. Information from the primary few months of 2025 present that schools have already given away greater than $3 million in federal support and over $700,000 in state {dollars}.
The scope of fraud is “relatively small,” stated Chris Ferguson, a finance govt on the chancellor’s workplace, particularly when in comparison with the roughly $1.7 billion in federal support and $1.5 billion in state support given to California’s neighborhood school college students final 12 months. He additionally stated it’s doubtless that schools have improved their means to detect fraud over time, doubtlessly inflating the reporting numbers.
State lawmakers have allotted roughly $150 million towards cybersecurity since 2022, and the chancellor’s workplace has introduced in quite a few tech firms — together with ID.Me, N2N, and LexisNexis — to assist authenticate college students. However Hetts stated none of those interventions will ever utterly eradicate fraud as a result of every time the state will get higher at preventing fraud, the unhealthy actors adapt — the tech equal to the “Red Queen hypothesis.”
School leaders additionally depend on the federal schooling division to assist discover scammers. The division is broadly chargeable for administering federal monetary support and for stopping and investigating associated fraud. The workplace that administers federal support has misplaced about half of its employees by means of layoffs, voluntary buyouts and retirements. California Lawyer Normal Rob Bonta just lately joined different Democratic attorneys common in suing the Trump administration over these cuts, alleging that they violate the U.S. Structure.
Though not technically a part of the lawsuit or the layoffs, the schooling division’s Workplace of Inspector Normal, which is chargeable for fraud detection, has additionally misplaced employees on account of buyouts and early retirements. Since Oct. 1, the Workplace of Inspector Normal has misplaced “more than 20% of its staff,” stated Catherine Grant, a spokesperson for the workplace, together with “experienced auditors and investigators.”
“As for how these staffing changes affect the Office of Inspector General’s ability to investigate student aid fraud in California, we are committed to fighting student aid fraud wherever we find it,” Grant stated. “But we are limited with what we can do based on our limited resources.”
Pretend college students utilizing AI
In 2023, librarian Heather Dodge began to note one thing odd concerning the college students who took her on-line analysis course at Berkeley Metropolis School. To attach with college students and make the category extra partaking, Dodge stated she at all times started the course by asking college students to submit a video introducing themselves utilizing their webcam or an iPhone.
“It’s a very low bar,” she stated, however “I started noticing that there would be a handful of students that wouldn’t submit that assignment in the first week.” First, she would ship them a message, after which, in the event that they nonetheless didn’t reply, she’d drop them from the category.