Higher education officials in California have cracked down on the “fake students” enrolling in their community colleges, occupying much-needed seats and, in some cases, collecting federal and state student aid.
But they downplay the cost of the fraud, which Secretary of Education Linda McMahon recently estimated to be $1 billion nationally each year. One California community college professor sees fake students enroll in her classes every semester, and if her estimates are anywhere close, puts the fraud in the hundreds of millions in the Golden State alone.
Beyond costing taxpayers, fraudsters impersonate real people, including those who have died.
Kim Rich, criminal justice professor at Pierce College in the Los Angeles Community College District, has been flagging the fake students and purging them from her classes for several years.
She sees them using images of real people taken off the internet, as well as their names and dates of birth. One such victim of identity theft was a young man who died in the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
Source: OpenTheBooks@substack.com
