Fake students’ financial aid fraud continues in Calif. colleges, potentially costing taxpayers millions

Fake students’ financial aid fraud continues in Calif. colleges, potentially costing taxpayers millions
"...The “fake students” financial aid fraud scam is costing taxpayers anywhere from hundreds of thousands of dollars to several million dollars, and one whistleblower professor told The College Fix she recently discovered a new method scammers use to obtain funds illegally.
Kim Rich, a criminal justice professor at Pierce College, told The Fix that over the past few weeks she has discovered a new method scammers are using: duplicating student IDs.

• Within a seven-day period from March 8 to March 15, Rich said she found that 620 out of 1,740 newly issued student IDs were duplicates and fake, about 36 percent; assuming every fraudulent application receives $5,000 in aid, the potential total loss comes to $3.1 million. That’s just one week, at one college, with easily identifiable fake students, she said.
• “There are
  likely hundreds more in that specific time frame, but those were just the easy ones to identify,” Rich said..."