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>California Community Colleges officials declined to say whether any financial aid was disbursed to fake students Well we all know what they'd be happy to tell

>California Community Colleges officials declined to say whether any financial aid was disbursed to fake students Well we all know what they'd be happy to tell us if they didn't. So by process of elimination...

LadyCailin 5y ago
They may have no clue.
xhkkffbf 5y ago
I'm guessing from the large number of fraudulent applications, a bunch of money was dispersed. Can anyone estimate how much? Did the system promise to give stipend checks to applicants?
- gabereiser 5y ago
  Let's assume $4k in annual cost (avg) for a year of community college. Let's multiply that by 64,000 applicants. Let's assume only 50,000 actually were paid out as tuition grants (probably more, possibly all, but bare with me). That's $200m paid out. $256m if all were paid out.
kova12 5y ago
Also, I'm wondering what happened in the previous years? I wouldn't be surprised if a scam was ongoing for a while, but 64K applications ended up being a little too many. I also would be surprised if the scam is only happening in CA, and the other places just turn the blind eye on it
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  I'd be willing to bet this scam was covid related, that is, being able to go to school from home enabled this scale of fraud. It probably existed before that but wasn't too widespread. I'd also be willing to bet that other state systems would find similar situations if they checked their rolls, like you said.
  - busyant 5y ago
    > I'd be willing to bet this scam was covid related You might be correct. The obvious idea is that it's more difficult to identify the phantom students if everything is virtual. That being said, where I teach, we have a system (both for on-ground and on-line) where you have to complete at least one non-trivial assignment (usually a quiz) within the first 2 weeks of the semester. If you don't complete the quiz (or whatever), you are dropped from the course and the loans are not fully released. I imagine our policy was in response to "phantom" students abusing the loan system. But our policy has been in place for at least 10 years so the scam has been afoot for a while.
peter303 5y ago
The Russian and Ukraine bank routing numbers should be a clue. Along with the payment in cryptocurrency.

LadyCailin 5y ago

They may have no clue.

xhkkffbf 5y ago

I'm guessing from the large number of fraudulent applications, a bunch of money was dispersed. Can anyone estimate how much? Did the system promise to give stipend checks to applicants?

gabereiser 5y ago
Let's assume $4k in annual cost (avg) for a year of community college. Let's multiply that by 64,000 applicants. Let's assume only 50,000 actually were paid out as tuition grants (probably more, possibly all, but bare with me). That's $200m paid out. $256m if all were paid out.

kova12 5y ago

Also, I'm wondering what happened in the previous years? I wouldn't be surprised if a scam was ongoing for a while, but 64K applications ended up being a little too many. I also would be surprised if the scam is only happening in CA, and the other places just turn the blind eye on it

betwixthewires 5y ago
I'd be willing to bet this scam was covid related, that is, being able to go to school from home enabled this scale of fraud. It probably existed before that but wasn't too widespread. I'd also be willing to bet that other state systems would find similar situations if they checked their rolls, like you said.
- busyant 5y ago
  > I'd be willing to bet this scam was covid related You might be correct. The obvious idea is that it's more difficult to identify the phantom students if everything is virtual. That being said, where I teach, we have a system (both for on-ground and on-line) where you have to complete at least one non-trivial assignment (usually a quiz) within the first 2 weeks of the semester. If you don't complete the quiz (or whatever), you are dropped from the course and the loans are not fully released. I imagine our policy was in response to "phantom" students abusing the loan system. But our policy has been in place for at least 10 years so the scam has been afoot for a while.

peter303 5y ago

The Russian and Ukraine bank routing numbers should be a clue. Along with the payment in cryptocurrency.