Suspected COVID-relief scam hits Sacramento community colleges with wave of fake students

California’s community colleges are actively investigating “suspicious activity” involving possible college application and financial aid fraud, the state’s community colleges chancellor’s office said Tuesday.

While the fraud could stretch across community colleges throughout the state, in the Sacramento area, the four Los Rios colleges “are seeing a number of fraudulent applications,” said Gabe Ross, Los Rios district assistant vice chancellor.

Many of the applications are coming from overseas “but we don’t have a clear picture about whether or not they are coming from a single place,” Ross said.

The community college system chancellor’s office said it “continues to gather information and most recently, we have been notified by some colleges that there may be ‘bot students’ in active courses.”

Their aim is apparently to get financial help or money from the federal COVID relief programs. The investigation was first reported by the Los Angeles Times.

The U.S. Department of Education’s inspector general’s office has been contacted.

San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton also saw a spike in fraudulent student applications, said Alex Breitler, a spokesman for the college.

“Our investigation is still in its preliminary stages, but it appears a person or group created pseudo-students and enrolled them into classes,” Breitler said. “We believe they did so with the goal of securing free software, textbooks, and in some cases, financial aid.”

The potential for fraud involving federal Covid aid rocked the state’s unemployment system last year and this year. At least $11 billion was paid fraudulently, and investigations are continuing.

At the colleges, since the summer, the state community college system has found 20% of traffic on its main application portal was “malicious and bot-related,” while Imperva Advance Bot Detection software was able to catch about 15%.

The numbers were included in a three page memo Monday from Valerie Lundy-Wagner, the system’s interim vice chancellor of digital innovation and infrastructure.

At the Los Rios colleges, Ross said there is a “robust daily process in place that identifies which enrollments may be fraudulent and, after a verification process, allows us to quickly disenroll them and shut down access to all district and college services.”

He said the colleges have distributed about $34 million in federal stimulus dollars directly to students, and does not have evidence of “a significant number of fraudulent applicants receiving stimulus funds or other financial aid.”

Breitler said Delta College also plans to “drop all pseudo-students who closely fit the patterns that we are seeing for fraudulent enrollment, block all of their access to services, and block any financial aid awards.”

Lundy-Wagner detailed steps the colleges are taking to combat potential fraud. Warning that “it is clear that nationally, bad actors are attempting to take advantage of any vulnerability across different sectors,” the chancellor’s office asked colleges and districts to report on a detailed set of metrics monthly involving suspected or confirmed fraud.

This story was originally published August 31, 2021 at 3:46 PM with the headline "Suspected COVID-relief scam hits Sacramento community colleges with wave of fake students."