How six California community college districts became targets of scammers
Michael Burke
November 5, 2021
At least hundreds of thousands of Covid and other financial aid seen disbursed to fake students.
At least six California community college districts suspect they have given out financial aid to fake students who have enrolled at their colleges this year.
At a minimum, the breaches represent a loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars to scammers seeking financial aid from California’s community colleges. It’s possible that much more money was delivered to fake students, given that the system’s 115 traditional colleges, enrolling about 1.8 million students, are in the midst of distributing more than $1.6 billion in federal Covid relief aid.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General is currently investigating the scam in California and nationwide. A spokesperson for the office declined to comment about the status of the investigation.
