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65k fake students enrolled in the California junior college system

174 points by SQL2219 4y ago

yawaramin 4y ago
> He shows the bot automatically filling out a Contra Costa College application with fake personal information, and within seven minutes, he has enrolled at Contra Costa College as Ivan N. Atkinson for the fall 2020 term. A honeypot or a captcha would probably reduce the scale of the fraudulent sign-ups quite a lot.
gjsman-1000 4y ago
Maybe a quick temporary fix would be to add a reCAPTCHA, and a better fix would be to mandate appearing on campus and verifying your identity before any accounts or financial aid is made available?
- Proven 4y ago
- fortran77 4y ago
  But the colleges get "free money," too, for every fake student. So nobody wants to stop it. > But Rich believes that these colleges do fear enrollment drops if they remove the fake accounts. > At her college, the institution is considered a medium college — more than 10,000 students but less than 20,000 — but if it loses students, it will be considered a small college — less than 10,000 students — and lose funding down the road, the interim VP of academic affairs recently told instructors and administrators. We need to change the laws to give any taxpayer standing to sue when they see taxpayer money being misappropriated.
  - gonzo41 4y ago
    In Australia it not that uncommon for the government to fund legal challenges via grants to it's own laws or to areas of unchallenged law to create rulings. But what you're describing almost seems like you need a anti corruption body that's publicly funded to sue for the best outcome of policy. Giving individuals standing would make it possible but cripplingly expensive to pursue.
    - whatusername 4y ago
      Have you got some specific Australian examples of that? I feel like I should know one or two - but nothing is coming to mind.
      - gonzo41 4y ago
        I was thinking about Family law court (federal in australia), in cases where it's complex migration and custody matters and some of the scenarios haven't really been seen before but may be considered on paper.
  - newbamboo 4y ago
    Exactly the same incentives problem with EDD. The more fraud, the larger their budget gets and so there is only one metric they care about; increasing the total number of recipients. Similar issue with fake user counts in the tech world. User count = money. Unfortunately the dominant party also benefits from all of this fraud, so it is ultimately a political problem. Until there is viable outside political competition, there will continue to be zero accountability and wide scale fraud and corruption. User count = money = political power/voters. Mainstream candidates are owned, and so the only solution involves draining the swamp so to speak and it’s pretty clear at this point, the swamp usually wins.
  - seoaeu 4y ago
    > We need to change the laws to give any taxpayer standing to sue when they see taxpayer money being misappropriated. If you did that, then any government aid program would spend all their time and money fending off frivolous lawsuits instead of providing aid to those who need it. Though maybe that’s the intended outcome
  - kwatsonafter 4y ago
    I don't mean to insult your intelligence but, "changing the laws to give any..." could be just as easily achieved by we common citizens choosing to fund the IRS.
    - fortran77 4y ago
      I can't choose not to fund the IRS without risking spending time in prison.
- killjoywashere 4y ago
  And whitelists and blacklists and IP addresses.
- matt-attack 4y ago
  Yes. Let’s solve a $1B tax fraud using captcha.
  - xbar 4y ago
    Captcha is effective at stopping a lot more fraud than $1B worth. Is it perfectly effective? No, but it stops a massive chunk of otherwise easy-to-execute fraud.
- tomascalletce 4y ago
  If you do that you run the risk of lowering your enrolment numbers and losing government funding for your institution. The problem is not tech related it is an incentives problem.
- HarryHirsch 4y ago
  Such is standard operating procedure on any campus where students receive federal funding. Phantom students are not common at all - anything with a name like "Open the Books" sounds like a lobby group, and one would like about their motives and funding sources.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
Whenever the topics of benefits fraud or means testing come up, there’s always a lot of commentary from people who say it’s more important to deliver aid freely and quickly than to ensure that it’s going to the right people. Yet this is a perfect example of why that doesn’t work in practice. Fraudsters are drawn to systems without sufficient controls and they will exploit them mercilessly as long as they think they can get away with it. Worse, aid is infinite and resources are limited. These fake students are blocking actual students from registering for classes and draining away the time of educators and administrators who should be busy running the school, not trying to separate out real and fake students. Means testing is a dumb idea if we’re administering, for example, a $100 drug test before giving someone $100 in food stamps. However, when we’re handing out $5,000 or more then investing $100-$200 into means testing or manual verification should have been an obvious requirement. EDIT: People seem to be misinterpreting this article. The aid in question came from the COVID-19 related HEERF funds and CARES act and was distributed directly to applicants. It did not count towards nor subtract from normal financial aid (FAFSA, etc.) meant to pay for the education. It was supposed to be money meant to help students survive outside of education in a faltering COVID economy. Financial aid for actual education would have gone straight to the school and therefore there's no reason for fraudsters to register to consume it. This is money distributed to students (or fraudsters) via direct deposit. It's different than the aid you're familiar with from past college application experience.
- formerkrogemp 4y ago
  We need more auditors, more audit money, and more audit work done. As an auditor, I'm not biased however.
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  It's not that the aid is 'going to the wrong people', it's the fact that financial aid needs to exist in the first place. Setting that aside, I don't really understand how this fraud happens- when I applied for FAFSA, the student loan account was created for me, the assistance applied through some automated system, which was hooked up directly to the college. I never saw the cash at all. The article doesn't explain how the fraud works either.
lifeplusplus 4y ago
If I remember filling out FAFSA it required SSN didn't it?
- Cerium 4y ago
  Correct. I don't see a path to direct financial benefits with a poorly created fake enrollment.
- frankfrankfrank 4y ago
  You assume that the SSN is some kind a magic code. The government has long undermined the use of the SSN for accountability or fidelity. It’s essentially a slave/serf/property tracking number, the fact that it is abused by con artists/criminals is wholly immaterial to the rulers. It’s why they don’t care that fraudulent SSNs are being used by illegals too. You are making assumptions about the motivations of the system being of good faith. There is ample evidence and multiple proofs that such is not the case. The same applies to the whole education funding scheme, including FAFSA. It’s essentially a money laundering scheme to support the financial enslavement of people through debt in order to participate and be conditioned as an alpha slave that is also locked into the system financially. There is no incentive to lower the cost of “education”. The incentive is to lock you into having to pay off more and more tokens/currency that you get for doing favors for your masters. The only reason why the rulers are even just toying with the student loan debt forgiveness is because there’s a slave revolt brewing among certain segments of the body of slaves/serfs.
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    this is an awful interpretation and of course it does not cover the entire situation, however, based on decades of real life interaction, I believe this is partly true.
  - datalopers 4y ago
    Please good people, I am in haste! Who lives in that castle?
  - Jerrrry 4y ago
perihelions 4y ago
- "Rich said administrators have focused more on ensuring that real students don’t get accidentally dropped from classes." - "“The school is leaving the fake students in,” she said. “The school is afraid if they admit the fraud, they’re on the hook for allowing the fraud and having to pay it back.”" It's also possible administrators are the ones putting the fake students in. They're the ones in the easiest position to do this fraud. Like in the Yale story from last month: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30849862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30849862
- xbar 4y ago
  It is possible. It is also possible that it was you. Or me. And in this case, equally likely. That is significantly different from the Yale case where someone with purse strings management was committing fraud.
  - daniel-cussen 4y ago
    No not equally likely, two randos on the internet being as likely as the guy who is immediate to the scam?
    - mod 4y ago
      I agree, but perhaps he meant something more like: "There's about as much evidence to convict [the guy] as there is to convict you or me."
      - daniel-cussen 4y ago
        I would say not even, circumstantial evidence already is more. There just isn't enough for a conviction. It's premature. There has to be a whole process. That being said, college administrators are masters at dodging the courtroom, and keeping people out of the courtroom. I imagine they have some ideas how to do it for themselves as well.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
newbamboo 4y ago
“The financial aid administrators at Pierce College say it’s not their job” Make them legally accountable. Banks can’t assist fraudsters and then say “not my job.” The administrators should be jailed or lending to colleges with this problem should stop.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  Interesting aside: Pierce College is where Kevin Mitnick took classes.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  Maybe going all the way to legally accountable is a bit much but the incentive not to waste other people's money is too damn low these days. You see it in every context and it's so frustrating.
  - newbamboo 4y ago
    Why would it be a bit much? Banks can’t give out fake loans. They try to all the time and are rightfully regulated/fined/charged when they do. Banks giving out bad loans caused the 2008 collapse. Student loans will one day cause a similar problem but it won’t be big banks going bankrupt, it will be us. Hearing that 20% are obvious fraud doesn’t even surprise anyone. Imagine a bank saying 20% of their loans are fraud but it’s “not their job” to check that loans are given to anonymous recipients who don’t bother to provide even a fake name! It’s a crime. Like the banks, the people at the top are aware but profit off doing nothing. That they work for the taxpayers just makes it that much more criminal, not less!
spicyusername 4y ago
Seems like a perfect storm of harmful incentives, no oversight, and weak political leadership. It's a great demonstration of how legislators (and the public) need to remember that policies have to work in the real world with real world constraints and not just on paper. It's good that some measures are planned to help prevent the fraud, but it's frustrating how slow they are to get implemented.
mistrial9 4y ago
Here in California, I believe I have seen administrators cover up enrollment irregularity (direct fraud?), even before covid-19, in the Hayward Adult School -- English as a Second Language (ESL) program, in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The administrators are cool like lawyers, but now reading this, it all fits.
- frankfrankfrank 4y ago
  Wouldn’t surprise me if the schools also get some central planning committee money and therefore are not incentivized and even negatively incentivized to do anything at all about it. They don’t care as long as they get theirs. It’s one of the many cancerous patterns that emerge from any kind of central planning/“communist” type system.
- mdavis6890 4y ago
  It may have been active "cover up" - but doesn't need to be (or have been). It could be just passively ignoring and not being curious about fraud that benefits you. More (apparent) students benefits the school. Suppose I'm running a tech company and a bunch of "users" are actually non-engaged, fake accounts. If my valuation is based at least in part on how many users I have, there is not a lot of incentive to go actively looking for, eliminating or preventing these fake accounts. I may even continue to believe that they are all real, engaged users and not even consider the alternative.
donthellbanme 4y ago
Depends on the school, but some will prosecute. My local community college woke up their sleepy 15 unit cop squad, and worked with financial aid, in order to prosecute a few people doing it. (A sleepy community college with 15 cops/detectives. There's a state law requiring cops per student ratio regardless of crime which is basically zero. They don't do anything besides ticket cars.) This is what we pay our police to investigate. The couple in Marin County signed up for classes, and got federal aid. They told their friends and it was a popular way to make a few grand, but their public outing stopped the scam. They always showed up to the first class though. Poor people will do sketch chit in order to get ahead. Rich people cheat better, in greater numbers, but don't get caught. (According to professor Cartman. "You know how white people get ahead? They cheat, but they call it, I miss interpreted the ruuules. I'm looking at you Covid business fraudsters, or moral fraudsters.)
shrubble 4y ago
This reminds me of Roman times, when generals would inflate the number of soldiers under them, get paid then pocket the difference. Or a more recent example, Afghanistan: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59230564 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59230564
- mistrial9 4y ago
  notice that Biometric Identification company posting the very first comment in that article comment section. While other YNews readers casually promote constant surveillance, I for one, am steadfastly, actively against biometric tagging for benefits, constant and automated surveillance against the powerless for violations, and no-recourse bureaucracies with guranteed revenue.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  Happens all over the place. In developing countries, work as a porter can be lucrative, especially because of the tips travelers give at the end. It's common for the number of porters at the tipping gathering to exceed the number of porters who actually worked the trip. The travelers usually don't have time or focus for learning to identify all of the porters so it's easy to get away with. Those who only show up at the end for a tip are expected to share part of the tip with the porters who kept silent about this.
- zw123456 4y ago
  That reminds me of this scam that this director at a BIG company I used to work at did. He got SSN's of dead people and made fake resume's and interviewed himself and hired them. Then collected their paychecks. Eventually he got caught of course, but big companies are funny how they don't like things like that getting out because it makes them look back and would shake investor confidence etc. So they just let him go, didn't prosecute or even try to get the money back, just swept it under the rug. I heard a year or so later he was at another big company with the same title and job. No idea if he was still doing that but would not surprise me if he continued doing unscrupulous things. Unfortunately, that type of thing seems to happen a lot in large bureaucracies for those same types of reasons, whether governments, big business or whatever, they want to sweep mistakes like that under the rug. Hopefully they plug the hole before doing that. One can hope.
_fat_santa 4y ago
Aren't there extra steps required for actually getting the aid dollars where they confirm you are a real person? All this seems to do is get you a .EDU email address (which is useful on its own for getting discounts and such)
rob_c 4y ago
"screenshots" of printouts... sounds like a typical academic institutional farce. Sounds like it impacted other states too, but I'm willing to bet certain states reduced the barrier to exploitation to zero and they wonder why it was an attractive target? reaping and sowing springs to mind
alloai 4y ago
I personally came across some of these situations, they sell unlimited onedrive storage or google drive storage , which comes from EDU domains.
AvocadoPanic 4y ago
California (insert project / program) leads to massive fraud isn't a new headline. Where's the vendor Xap in this? Were they not obligated to deliver a application system resistant to obvious forms of fraud and abuse? I know they're primarily an Education software vendor but this seems especially poor.
- orware 4y ago
  XAP is the old system, but I don’t think it’s in use anymore (back then it was just “CCCApply”). The current system, now called “OpenCCCApply”, was mostly developed by a team from Unicon (https://www.unicon.net/ https://www.unicon.net/), along with folks within the CCCTechCenter team of my memory /understanding is correct (I’m not sure if it’s managed jointly though, or if only a CCCTechCenter team mostly manages it now though since I never heard those types of details). A redesign/modernization effort however sounds…expensive.
wildrhythms 4y ago
Can someone please explain in detail how the fraud works? The article doesn't fully explain how the is money distributed to the fraudsters. With FAFSA, the assistance is all encapsulated away from the student- you apply for an assistance loan (requires SSN), an account is created for you, the college is hooked up directly to that account, so you never actually handle the cash. How does this specific fraud actually work?
- Siira 4y ago
  One obvious loophole is that there a lot of people (SSNs) who haven’t gone to a college already, so the college can just sign up people and get subsidies without those “students” ever showing up. They can pay these students, or possibly fake their documentation.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  COVID brought a rush of emergency aid programs that weren't very well thought out. In this case, the aid targeted at students likely came through the HEERF, or Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds. Some of the programs are listed here: https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/crrsaa.html https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/crrsaa.html The reason these are ripe for fraud is that in many cases they were implemented as direct deposit transfers directly to registered students. They were implemented without checks or controls in order to get the money out ASAP, so anyone who registered as a student and entered the correct information to qualify could get one of those direct deposits. As far as I can tell, some of the implementation details depended on the college. Scammers likely tried different colleges until they discovered a system that didn't verify anything (California Junior College System) and then started filling out forms to collect the direct deposits. The fact that scammers are registering with obviously fake names like "Barack Obama" suggests that zero confirmations are being performed at all before this money is distributed.
  - ec109685 4y ago
    This article has confirmation that colleges did in fact get scammed: https://edsource.org/2021/at-these-california-community-colleges-scammers-got-their-hands-on-financial-aid/663152 https://edsource.org/2021/at-these-california-community-coll... Thanks for providing the additional details.
bushbaba 4y ago
Don’t you need a SSN or Tax I’d to get the financial aid. At least I remember needing that info to register for university in another state.
adam_arthur 4y ago
A bunch of The Bachelor contestants were also caught taking borderline fraudulent PPP loans. https://pagesix.com/2021/06/28/tayshia-adams-and-more-bachelor-alums-got-20k-ppp-loans/ https://pagesix.com/2021/06/28/tayshia-adams-and-more-bachel... These covid programs were certainly a massive handout to the unscrupulous. I feel sorry for those who worked hard and lived frugally, just to get steamrolled by the government money printer. And look how reluctant the Fed and Fiscal were to reign in any of the madness. 0 moves until 8% CPI. Can't have housing appreciate at 10% instead of 20%, or stocks at 10 instead of 30 now, can we? Never seen a class of people so eager to take wealth/future prosperity from their children
- usrn 4y ago
  Chances are they don't have children.
  - adam_arthur 4y ago
    Beyond your own children, lawmakers should care about making policy that benefits the future of society. Perhaps too altruistic for some. But now that inflation is here and consumer sentiment is close to all time lows, the jig is up.
- newbamboo 4y ago
  “class of people so eager to take wealth/future prosperity from their children” Agreed. Very Ugolino.
- ourmandave 4y ago
  There's been a lot of U.S. gov bailouts before covid. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/government-financial-bailout.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/governmen... The next one looks like student loans which totals $1.61T nation wide.
  - adam_arthur 4y ago
    2008 bailout didn't even come close to the size of the Covid one. And there were far fewer "helicopter" dollars, no eviction moratorium, foreclosure moratorium, student debt forbearance. And the economy was much worse back then, with many high profile bankruptcies and slow gains in employment The initial Covid packages were warranted, but the packages passed in December 2020 and March 2021 were largely unnecessary after the initial shock had passed and the velocity in the drop in unemployment was already strong. Or they may have been warranted at a much smaller magnitude with more discretion in who received benefits. The consequence now is that the economy is so overstimulated, we basically have to force the recession we would have had anyway to prevent it from overheating. So we'll end up in the same place, but with a ton of extra debt to service
grumple 4y ago
This is such an easy problem to solve. There are simple technical tools to prevent bots from enrolling. More advanced detection methods will catch basically all of the rest. And then you can and should be contacting prospective students via phone or otherwise to verify enrollment. And require physical presence and ID (as my university did) before distributing aid. Just an example of truly inept leadership in multiple departments and at the top.
orware 4y ago
It’s interesting to see this thread crop up here, as I’ve only recently left CCC system for a job in tech after being in IT within the system for about 14 years. This particular issue over the last year or so has gotten worse, with more eyeballs on it, once actual money became involved (before it was still an issue but on a smaller scale mostly for the free edu emails we tend to issue, along with other freebies that can help enable, such as free credits for Azure or other services). Even in the previous cases, I was annoyed/upset because in my mind the first line of defense the colleges have is preventing these fake users from being able to submit an application successfully in the first place, since the OpenCCCApply application (which I believe is used by all ~115 CCCs) was allowing the submissions in the first place…and since we mostly bring that application data into the individual colleges, not many triggered a “hold” on our end. Yes, CCCTechCenter (which helps manage the team which maintains the OpenCCCApply system) have done a few things over this past year that are mentioned in the article already (but based on the article I can’t tell 100% if it is really indicating the issue is still rampant in the more recent semesters…one of the changes was adding usage of an IP reputation checker in for example, but there are likely ways around that too for these folks who actually don’t seem to actually use bots…maybe they use actual people instead based on what I’ve seen, such as the YouTube video shared in the article). What I found really annoying by it all is that while the problem originated from the systems being provided to the colleges from the state level (OpenCCCApply mainly), the individual colleges are now on the hook to gather a bunch of mostly useless data, and go on silly adventures such as investigating IP address info within our other systems (like Canvas) to help find or report the fraudulent activity. I think I saw FAFSA mentioned a few times but I don’t think there is a ton of fraud coming from the FAFSA application too directly…but in this past year many of the colleges have been putting COVID relief funds they’ve received (to help get students/staff back on campus) and using those to pay for fees or provide an extra amount for books, etc. which isn’t something that will continue forever (in fact, I think for this summer this will already have ended, or it will be the last semester where it will be offered). In most cases, once the incentive is taken away, or the bar to get it is made higher, these folks creating the fraudulent accounts will generally move on (or target schools that don’t implement some of the 2nd layer fixes at the college level…unfortunately while the CCCTechCenter tries its best, it doesn’t typically fully acknowledge its role in creating some of these situations, and I almost lol’ed when I saw towards the end of the article I saw they are looking to get more funding to “modernize” it, yet again, considering a lot of effort / time / money already has gone into creating the current OpenCCCApply system not that long ago from the previous system, which was pretty bad in comparison). Overall though this particular situation is at the same both more complex and simpler than folks may think, once you have some more details (more complex because there is a lot about what’s going on in the CCCs the HN community isn’t aware of, along with super strict regulations that have to be followed within the individual Financial Aid departments at each school, otherwise they win not be able to provide federal aid monies to students if they weren’t doing so, making that avenue for fraud a lot more less likely than the scenario I shared above on how the COVID relief monies have been being used instead to provide an incentive to get students back in the classroom…along with the solution being simpler since we already have a central application process that should be the system that keeps these applications from ever reaching the individual colleges, but it fails in that regard…that along with removing the financial incentive currently present, should reduce the fraud levels considerably…although there are likely a few more complexities even I am unaware of…I would just appreciate it if the search for fraud wouldn’t get pushed onto the individual colleges in these situations where a system wide protection should have prevented the situations in the first place, mainly because it causes a ton on unneeded busy work at the colleges keeping IT System Analysts and other technical folks from focusing on other, probably more important, internal projects). Excuse any typos…I wrote this small novel on my phone.
reboot81 4y ago
In Sweden any financial aid to students are revoked if you dont get a grade. If you apply a second time, after failing classes you simply dont get aid until your grades improve. Aid is only paid out a month at a time. Also, you have to apply using digital-ID (BankID) for both classes and aid, theres no way to cheat. This way, fraud is unheard of. Educational aid, if paid out erroneously is collected more aggressively than taxes.
- jmeister 4y ago
  The Scandinavia-fetishizing American progressives tend to ignore this.
  - YATA1 4y ago
  - skinnymuch 4y ago
    How do you think most Govt grants including the biggest pell grant works. Same thing. You can’t keep failing.
- skinnymuch 4y ago
  In America, the vast majority of financial aid to students is revoked if they fail their classes. Not sure how often aid is given out, but 1 month vs 4 isn’t a big difference. I haven’t heard much of any America specific big time fraud in this area either. If any implication was this article. That doesn’t count since the article isn’t saying aid is happening unlike Sweden.
phkahler 4y ago
>> But Rich believes that these colleges do fear enrollment drops if they remove the fake accounts. And then more quotes back that up. Just make people register on site. Still via computer but in person. Problem solved. This is community college where everyone is local.
- mdavis6890 4y ago
  There are no reasons for the college to identify fake students, or event prevent it in the future. higher (apparent) enrollment justifies larger budgets and funding. And it's not their money being given away.
  - phkahler 4y ago
    Its fraud, and it causes distortions in funding education. If they're aware of it, they may be culpable at some point.
ryantgtg 4y ago
LA Times has been covering this story, as well (featuring the same instructor sleuth): https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-12-17/fake-student-bots-enrolled-in-community-colleges-one-professor-has-become-a-bot-sleuthing-continues-to-fight-them https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-12-17/fake-stu... https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-03-22/some-community-colleges-havent-shared-application-fraud-data-months-since-rise-in-bot-enrollment https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-03-22/some-com...
chernevik 4y ago
Call me when some bureaucrat loses their job, and the overseeing legislators are turned out of office. This happens because our political systems have no incentives to prevent it from happening.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  .. and others signalling that when they find out, they do not care, are not surprised, and bother to do nothing about it.
ineedasername 4y ago
Federal aid requires attendance verification for each course a student takes. In my state, state-level aid adopted the same requirement. Why the heck does the California system do this too? Not to mention that even getting the aid in the first place requires filling out a FAFSA form-- difficult to provide fake tax returns-- and about 10% are randomly selected for verification as well.
lettergram 4y ago
This is called fraud and administrators should be being investigated for it. They get kickbacks for the government.
YATA2 4y ago
gumby 4y ago
Murphy’s law says whoever ends up trying to screen these out will not have read https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-... and thus will unwittingly screen out plenty of legitimate students as well. From the cases described in the article: Some people actually do have a given name as their family name and some even have the same name for both (I know a Peter Peter). Also some people only have a single name (consider the famous IBM Fellow Mohan, who types “C Mohan” when some system can’t deal with that case. Straightening this out will be tedious and costly. I feel bad for the actual students who were unable to register.
- areyousure 4y ago
  In case anyone is curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Mohan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Mohan
fareesh 4y ago
There are also services that sell .edu domains to avail discounts on various web products.
tamaharbor 4y ago
But absolutely no cheating in the 2020 elections. Go figure.
CryptoPunk 4y ago
And the Democratic Party claims voters should not be required to show photo ID to vote.
gcanyon 4y ago
How is this even remotely difficult to reduce? I say reduce instead of illuminate because there will always be some form of fraud. But at least make a real live person show up for class in order to get the money ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

174 points by SQL2219 4y ago

> He shows the bot automatically filling out a Contra Costa College application with fake personal information, and within seven minutes, he has enrolled at Contra Costa College as Ivan N. Atkinson for the fall 2020 term. A honeypot or a captcha would probably reduce the scale of the fraudulent sign-ups quite a lot.

gjsman-1000 4y ago

Maybe a quick temporary fix would be to add a reCAPTCHA, and a better fix would be to mandate appearing on campus and verifying your identity before any accounts or financial aid is made available?

Proven 4y ago
fortran77 4y ago
But the colleges get "free money," too, for every fake student. So nobody wants to stop it. > But Rich believes that these colleges do fear enrollment drops if they remove the fake accounts. > At her college, the institution is considered a medium college — more than 10,000 students but less than 20,000 — but if it loses students, it will be considered a small college — less than 10,000 students — and lose funding down the road, the interim VP of academic affairs recently told instructors and administrators. We need to change the laws to give any taxpayer standing to sue when they see taxpayer money being misappropriated.
- gonzo41 4y ago
  In Australia it not that uncommon for the government to fund legal challenges via grants to it's own laws or to areas of unchallenged law to create rulings. But what you're describing almost seems like you need a anti corruption body that's publicly funded to sue for the best outcome of policy. Giving individuals standing would make it possible but cripplingly expensive to pursue.
  - whatusername 4y ago
    Have you got some specific Australian examples of that? I feel like I should know one or two - but nothing is coming to mind.
    - gonzo41 4y ago
      I was thinking about Family law court (federal in australia), in cases where it's complex migration and custody matters and some of the scenarios haven't really been seen before but may be considered on paper.
- newbamboo 4y ago
  Exactly the same incentives problem with EDD. The more fraud, the larger their budget gets and so there is only one metric they care about; increasing the total number of recipients. Similar issue with fake user counts in the tech world. User count = money. Unfortunately the dominant party also benefits from all of this fraud, so it is ultimately a political problem. Until there is viable outside political competition, there will continue to be zero accountability and wide scale fraud and corruption. User count = money = political power/voters. Mainstream candidates are owned, and so the only solution involves draining the swamp so to speak and it’s pretty clear at this point, the swamp usually wins.
- seoaeu 4y ago
  > We need to change the laws to give any taxpayer standing to sue when they see taxpayer money being misappropriated. If you did that, then any government aid program would spend all their time and money fending off frivolous lawsuits instead of providing aid to those who need it. Though maybe that’s the intended outcome
- kwatsonafter 4y ago
  I don't mean to insult your intelligence but, "changing the laws to give any..." could be just as easily achieved by we common citizens choosing to fund the IRS.
  - fortran77 4y ago
    I can't choose not to fund the IRS without risking spending time in prison.
killjoywashere 4y ago
And whitelists and blacklists and IP addresses.
matt-attack 4y ago
Yes. Let’s solve a $1B tax fraud using captcha.
- xbar 4y ago
  Captcha is effective at stopping a lot more fraud than $1B worth. Is it perfectly effective? No, but it stops a massive chunk of otherwise easy-to-execute fraud.
tomascalletce 4y ago
If you do that you run the risk of lowering your enrolment numbers and losing government funding for your institution. The problem is not tech related it is an incentives problem.
HarryHirsch 4y ago
Such is standard operating procedure on any campus where students receive federal funding. Phantom students are not common at all - anything with a name like "Open the Books" sounds like a lobby group, and one would like about their motives and funding sources.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

Whenever the topics of benefits fraud or means testing come up, there’s always a lot of commentary from people who say it’s more important to deliver aid freely and quickly than to ensure that it’s going to the right people. Yet this is a perfect example of why that doesn’t work in practice. Fraudsters are drawn to systems without sufficient controls and they will exploit them mercilessly as long as they think they can get away with it. Worse, aid is infinite and resources are limited. These fake students are blocking actual students from registering for classes and draining away the time of educators and administrators who should be busy running the school, not trying to separate out real and fake students. Means testing is a dumb idea if we’re administering, for example, a $100 drug test before giving someone $100 in food stamps. However, when we’re handing out $5,000 or more then investing $100-$200 into means testing or manual verification should have been an obvious requirement. EDIT: People seem to be misinterpreting this article. The aid in question came from the COVID-19 related HEERF funds and CARES act and was distributed directly to applicants. It did not count towards nor subtract from normal financial aid (FAFSA, etc.) meant to pay for the education. It was supposed to be money meant to help students survive outside of education in a faltering COVID economy. Financial aid for actual education would have gone straight to the school and therefore there's no reason for fraudsters to register to consume it. This is money distributed to students (or fraudsters) via direct deposit. It's different than the aid you're familiar with from past college application experience.

formerkrogemp 4y ago
We need more auditors, more audit money, and more audit work done. As an auditor, I'm not biased however.
wildrhythms 4y ago
It's not that the aid is 'going to the wrong people', it's the fact that financial aid needs to exist in the first place. Setting that aside, I don't really understand how this fraud happens- when I applied for FAFSA, the student loan account was created for me, the assistance applied through some automated system, which was hooked up directly to the college. I never saw the cash at all. The article doesn't explain how the fraud works either.

lifeplusplus 4y ago

If I remember filling out FAFSA it required SSN didn't it?

Cerium 4y ago
Correct. I don't see a path to direct financial benefits with a poorly created fake enrollment.
frankfrankfrank 4y ago
You assume that the SSN is some kind a magic code. The government has long undermined the use of the SSN for accountability or fidelity. It’s essentially a slave/serf/property tracking number, the fact that it is abused by con artists/criminals is wholly immaterial to the rulers. It’s why they don’t care that fraudulent SSNs are being used by illegals too. You are making assumptions about the motivations of the system being of good faith. There is ample evidence and multiple proofs that such is not the case. The same applies to the whole education funding scheme, including FAFSA. It’s essentially a money laundering scheme to support the financial enslavement of people through debt in order to participate and be conditioned as an alpha slave that is also locked into the system financially. There is no incentive to lower the cost of “education”. The incentive is to lock you into having to pay off more and more tokens/currency that you get for doing favors for your masters. The only reason why the rulers are even just toying with the student loan debt forgiveness is because there’s a slave revolt brewing among certain segments of the body of slaves/serfs.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  this is an awful interpretation and of course it does not cover the entire situation, however, based on decades of real life interaction, I believe this is partly true.
- datalopers 4y ago
  Please good people, I am in haste! Who lives in that castle?
- Jerrrry 4y ago

perihelions 4y ago

- "Rich said administrators have focused more on ensuring that real students don’t get accidentally dropped from classes." - "“The school is leaving the fake students in,” she said. “The school is afraid if they admit the fraud, they’re on the hook for allowing the fraud and having to pay it back.”" It's also possible administrators are the ones putting the fake students in. They're the ones in the easiest position to do this fraud. Like in the Yale story from last month: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30849862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30849862

xbar 4y ago
It is possible. It is also possible that it was you. Or me. And in this case, equally likely. That is significantly different from the Yale case where someone with purse strings management was committing fraud.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
  No not equally likely, two randos on the internet being as likely as the guy who is immediate to the scam?
  - mod 4y ago
    I agree, but perhaps he meant something more like: "There's about as much evidence to convict [the guy] as there is to convict you or me."
    - daniel-cussen 4y ago
      I would say not even, circumstantial evidence already is more. There just isn't enough for a conviction. It's premature. There has to be a whole process. That being said, college administrators are masters at dodging the courtroom, and keeping people out of the courtroom. I imagine they have some ideas how to do it for themselves as well.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

newbamboo 4y ago

“The financial aid administrators at Pierce College say it’s not their job” Make them legally accountable. Banks can’t assist fraudsters and then say “not my job.” The administrators should be jailed or lending to colleges with this problem should stop.

Mountain_Skies 4y ago
Interesting aside: Pierce College is where Kevin Mitnick took classes.
throwaway0a5e 4y ago
Maybe going all the way to legally accountable is a bit much but the incentive not to waste other people's money is too damn low these days. You see it in every context and it's so frustrating.
- newbamboo 4y ago
  Why would it be a bit much? Banks can’t give out fake loans. They try to all the time and are rightfully regulated/fined/charged when they do. Banks giving out bad loans caused the 2008 collapse. Student loans will one day cause a similar problem but it won’t be big banks going bankrupt, it will be us. Hearing that 20% are obvious fraud doesn’t even surprise anyone. Imagine a bank saying 20% of their loans are fraud but it’s “not their job” to check that loans are given to anonymous recipients who don’t bother to provide even a fake name! It’s a crime. Like the banks, the people at the top are aware but profit off doing nothing. That they work for the taxpayers just makes it that much more criminal, not less!

spicyusername 4y ago

Seems like a perfect storm of harmful incentives, no oversight, and weak political leadership. It's a great demonstration of how legislators (and the public) need to remember that policies have to work in the real world with real world constraints and not just on paper. It's good that some measures are planned to help prevent the fraud, but it's frustrating how slow they are to get implemented.

mistrial9 4y ago

Here in California, I believe I have seen administrators cover up enrollment irregularity (direct fraud?), even before covid-19, in the Hayward Adult School -- English as a Second Language (ESL) program, in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The administrators are cool like lawyers, but now reading this, it all fits.

frankfrankfrank 4y ago
Wouldn’t surprise me if the schools also get some central planning committee money and therefore are not incentivized and even negatively incentivized to do anything at all about it. They don’t care as long as they get theirs. It’s one of the many cancerous patterns that emerge from any kind of central planning/“communist” type system.
mdavis6890 4y ago
It may have been active "cover up" - but doesn't need to be (or have been). It could be just passively ignoring and not being curious about fraud that benefits you. More (apparent) students benefits the school. Suppose I'm running a tech company and a bunch of "users" are actually non-engaged, fake accounts. If my valuation is based at least in part on how many users I have, there is not a lot of incentive to go actively looking for, eliminating or preventing these fake accounts. I may even continue to believe that they are all real, engaged users and not even consider the alternative.

donthellbanme 4y ago

Depends on the school, but some will prosecute. My local community college woke up their sleepy 15 unit cop squad, and worked with financial aid, in order to prosecute a few people doing it. (A sleepy community college with 15 cops/detectives. There's a state law requiring cops per student ratio regardless of crime which is basically zero. They don't do anything besides ticket cars.) This is what we pay our police to investigate. The couple in Marin County signed up for classes, and got federal aid. They told their friends and it was a popular way to make a few grand, but their public outing stopped the scam. They always showed up to the first class though. Poor people will do sketch chit in order to get ahead. Rich people cheat better, in greater numbers, but don't get caught. (According to professor Cartman. "You know how white people get ahead? They cheat, but they call it, I miss interpreted the ruuules. I'm looking at you Covid business fraudsters, or moral fraudsters.)

shrubble 4y ago

This reminds me of Roman times, when generals would inflate the number of soldiers under them, get paid then pocket the difference. Or a more recent example, Afghanistan: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59230564 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59230564

mistrial9 4y ago
notice that Biometric Identification company posting the very first comment in that article comment section. While other YNews readers casually promote constant surveillance, I for one, am steadfastly, actively against biometric tagging for benefits, constant and automated surveillance against the powerless for violations, and no-recourse bureaucracies with guranteed revenue.
Mountain_Skies 4y ago
Happens all over the place. In developing countries, work as a porter can be lucrative, especially because of the tips travelers give at the end. It's common for the number of porters at the tipping gathering to exceed the number of porters who actually worked the trip. The travelers usually don't have time or focus for learning to identify all of the porters so it's easy to get away with. Those who only show up at the end for a tip are expected to share part of the tip with the porters who kept silent about this.
zw123456 4y ago
That reminds me of this scam that this director at a BIG company I used to work at did. He got SSN's of dead people and made fake resume's and interviewed himself and hired them. Then collected their paychecks. Eventually he got caught of course, but big companies are funny how they don't like things like that getting out because it makes them look back and would shake investor confidence etc. So they just let him go, didn't prosecute or even try to get the money back, just swept it under the rug. I heard a year or so later he was at another big company with the same title and job. No idea if he was still doing that but would not surprise me if he continued doing unscrupulous things. Unfortunately, that type of thing seems to happen a lot in large bureaucracies for those same types of reasons, whether governments, big business or whatever, they want to sweep mistakes like that under the rug. Hopefully they plug the hole before doing that. One can hope.

_fat_santa 4y ago

Aren't there extra steps required for actually getting the aid dollars where they confirm you are a real person? All this seems to do is get you a .EDU email address (which is useful on its own for getting discounts and such)

rob_c 4y ago

"screenshots" of printouts... sounds like a typical academic institutional farce. Sounds like it impacted other states too, but I'm willing to bet certain states reduced the barrier to exploitation to zero and they wonder why it was an attractive target? reaping and sowing springs to mind

alloai 4y ago

I personally came across some of these situations, they sell unlimited onedrive storage or google drive storage , which comes from EDU domains.

AvocadoPanic 4y ago

California (insert project / program) leads to massive fraud isn't a new headline. Where's the vendor Xap in this? Were they not obligated to deliver a application system resistant to obvious forms of fraud and abuse? I know they're primarily an Education software vendor but this seems especially poor.

orware 4y ago
XAP is the old system, but I don’t think it’s in use anymore (back then it was just “CCCApply”). The current system, now called “OpenCCCApply”, was mostly developed by a team from Unicon (https://www.unicon.net/ https://www.unicon.net/), along with folks within the CCCTechCenter team of my memory /understanding is correct (I’m not sure if it’s managed jointly though, or if only a CCCTechCenter team mostly manages it now though since I never heard those types of details). A redesign/modernization effort however sounds…expensive.

wildrhythms 4y ago

Can someone please explain in detail how the fraud works? The article doesn't fully explain how the is money distributed to the fraudsters. With FAFSA, the assistance is all encapsulated away from the student- you apply for an assistance loan (requires SSN), an account is created for you, the college is hooked up directly to that account, so you never actually handle the cash. How does this specific fraud actually work?

Siira 4y ago
One obvious loophole is that there a lot of people (SSNs) who haven’t gone to a college already, so the college can just sign up people and get subsidies without those “students” ever showing up. They can pay these students, or possibly fake their documentation.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
COVID brought a rush of emergency aid programs that weren't very well thought out. In this case, the aid targeted at students likely came through the HEERF, or Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds. Some of the programs are listed here: https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/crrsaa.html https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/crrsaa.html The reason these are ripe for fraud is that in many cases they were implemented as direct deposit transfers directly to registered students. They were implemented without checks or controls in order to get the money out ASAP, so anyone who registered as a student and entered the correct information to qualify could get one of those direct deposits. As far as I can tell, some of the implementation details depended on the college. Scammers likely tried different colleges until they discovered a system that didn't verify anything (California Junior College System) and then started filling out forms to collect the direct deposits. The fact that scammers are registering with obviously fake names like "Barack Obama" suggests that zero confirmations are being performed at all before this money is distributed.
- ec109685 4y ago
  This article has confirmation that colleges did in fact get scammed: https://edsource.org/2021/at-these-california-community-colleges-scammers-got-their-hands-on-financial-aid/663152 https://edsource.org/2021/at-these-california-community-coll... Thanks for providing the additional details.

bushbaba 4y ago

Don’t you need a SSN or Tax I’d to get the financial aid. At least I remember needing that info to register for university in another state.

adam_arthur 4y ago

A bunch of The Bachelor contestants were also caught taking borderline fraudulent PPP loans. https://pagesix.com/2021/06/28/tayshia-adams-and-more-bachelor-alums-got-20k-ppp-loans/ https://pagesix.com/2021/06/28/tayshia-adams-and-more-bachel... These covid programs were certainly a massive handout to the unscrupulous. I feel sorry for those who worked hard and lived frugally, just to get steamrolled by the government money printer. And look how reluctant the Fed and Fiscal were to reign in any of the madness. 0 moves until 8% CPI. Can't have housing appreciate at 10% instead of 20%, or stocks at 10 instead of 30 now, can we? Never seen a class of people so eager to take wealth/future prosperity from their children

usrn 4y ago
Chances are they don't have children.
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  Beyond your own children, lawmakers should care about making policy that benefits the future of society. Perhaps too altruistic for some. But now that inflation is here and consumer sentiment is close to all time lows, the jig is up.
newbamboo 4y ago
“class of people so eager to take wealth/future prosperity from their children” Agreed. Very Ugolino.
ourmandave 4y ago
There's been a lot of U.S. gov bailouts before covid. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/government-financial-bailout.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/governmen... The next one looks like student loans which totals $1.61T nation wide.
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  2008 bailout didn't even come close to the size of the Covid one. And there were far fewer "helicopter" dollars, no eviction moratorium, foreclosure moratorium, student debt forbearance. And the economy was much worse back then, with many high profile bankruptcies and slow gains in employment The initial Covid packages were warranted, but the packages passed in December 2020 and March 2021 were largely unnecessary after the initial shock had passed and the velocity in the drop in unemployment was already strong. Or they may have been warranted at a much smaller magnitude with more discretion in who received benefits. The consequence now is that the economy is so overstimulated, we basically have to force the recession we would have had anyway to prevent it from overheating. So we'll end up in the same place, but with a ton of extra debt to service

grumple 4y ago

This is such an easy problem to solve. There are simple technical tools to prevent bots from enrolling. More advanced detection methods will catch basically all of the rest. And then you can and should be contacting prospective students via phone or otherwise to verify enrollment. And require physical presence and ID (as my university did) before distributing aid. Just an example of truly inept leadership in multiple departments and at the top.

orware 4y ago

It’s interesting to see this thread crop up here, as I’ve only recently left CCC system for a job in tech after being in IT within the system for about 14 years. This particular issue over the last year or so has gotten worse, with more eyeballs on it, once actual money became involved (before it was still an issue but on a smaller scale mostly for the free edu emails we tend to issue, along with other freebies that can help enable, such as free credits for Azure or other services). Even in the previous cases, I was annoyed/upset because in my mind the first line of defense the colleges have is preventing these fake users from being able to submit an application successfully in the first place, since the OpenCCCApply application (which I believe is used by all ~115 CCCs) was allowing the submissions in the first place…and since we mostly bring that application data into the individual colleges, not many triggered a “hold” on our end. Yes, CCCTechCenter (which helps manage the team which maintains the OpenCCCApply system) have done a few things over this past year that are mentioned in the article already (but based on the article I can’t tell 100% if it is really indicating the issue is still rampant in the more recent semesters…one of the changes was adding usage of an IP reputation checker in for example, but there are likely ways around that too for these folks who actually don’t seem to actually use bots…maybe they use actual people instead based on what I’ve seen, such as the YouTube video shared in the article). What I found really annoying by it all is that while the problem originated from the systems being provided to the colleges from the state level (OpenCCCApply mainly), the individual colleges are now on the hook to gather a bunch of mostly useless data, and go on silly adventures such as investigating IP address info within our other systems (like Canvas) to help find or report the fraudulent activity. I think I saw FAFSA mentioned a few times but I don’t think there is a ton of fraud coming from the FAFSA application too directly…but in this past year many of the colleges have been putting COVID relief funds they’ve received (to help get students/staff back on campus) and using those to pay for fees or provide an extra amount for books, etc. which isn’t something that will continue forever (in fact, I think for this summer this will already have ended, or it will be the last semester where it will be offered). In most cases, once the incentive is taken away, or the bar to get it is made higher, these folks creating the fraudulent accounts will generally move on (or target schools that don’t implement some of the 2nd layer fixes at the college level…unfortunately while the CCCTechCenter tries its best, it doesn’t typically fully acknowledge its role in creating some of these situations, and I almost lol’ed when I saw towards the end of the article I saw they are looking to get more funding to “modernize” it, yet again, considering a lot of effort / time / money already has gone into creating the current OpenCCCApply system not that long ago from the previous system, which was pretty bad in comparison). Overall though this particular situation is at the same both more complex and simpler than folks may think, once you have some more details (more complex because there is a lot about what’s going on in the CCCs the HN community isn’t aware of, along with super strict regulations that have to be followed within the individual Financial Aid departments at each school, otherwise they win not be able to provide federal aid monies to students if they weren’t doing so, making that avenue for fraud a lot more less likely than the scenario I shared above on how the COVID relief monies have been being used instead to provide an incentive to get students back in the classroom…along with the solution being simpler since we already have a central application process that should be the system that keeps these applications from ever reaching the individual colleges, but it fails in that regard…that along with removing the financial incentive currently present, should reduce the fraud levels considerably…although there are likely a few more complexities even I am unaware of…I would just appreciate it if the search for fraud wouldn’t get pushed onto the individual colleges in these situations where a system wide protection should have prevented the situations in the first place, mainly because it causes a ton on unneeded busy work at the colleges keeping IT System Analysts and other technical folks from focusing on other, probably more important, internal projects). Excuse any typos…I wrote this small novel on my phone.

reboot81 4y ago

In Sweden any financial aid to students are revoked if you dont get a grade. If you apply a second time, after failing classes you simply dont get aid until your grades improve. Aid is only paid out a month at a time. Also, you have to apply using digital-ID (BankID) for both classes and aid, theres no way to cheat. This way, fraud is unheard of. Educational aid, if paid out erroneously is collected more aggressively than taxes.

jmeister 4y ago
The Scandinavia-fetishizing American progressives tend to ignore this.
- YATA1 4y ago
- skinnymuch 4y ago
  How do you think most Govt grants including the biggest pell grant works. Same thing. You can’t keep failing.
skinnymuch 4y ago
In America, the vast majority of financial aid to students is revoked if they fail their classes. Not sure how often aid is given out, but 1 month vs 4 isn’t a big difference. I haven’t heard much of any America specific big time fraud in this area either. If any implication was this article. That doesn’t count since the article isn’t saying aid is happening unlike Sweden.

phkahler 4y ago

>> But Rich believes that these colleges do fear enrollment drops if they remove the fake accounts. And then more quotes back that up. Just make people register on site. Still via computer but in person. Problem solved. This is community college where everyone is local.

mdavis6890 4y ago
There are no reasons for the college to identify fake students, or event prevent it in the future. higher (apparent) enrollment justifies larger budgets and funding. And it's not their money being given away.
- phkahler 4y ago
  Its fraud, and it causes distortions in funding education. If they're aware of it, they may be culpable at some point.

ryantgtg 4y ago

LA Times has been covering this story, as well (featuring the same instructor sleuth): https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-12-17/fake-student-bots-enrolled-in-community-colleges-one-professor-has-become-a-bot-sleuthing-continues-to-fight-them https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-12-17/fake-stu... https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-03-22/some-community-colleges-havent-shared-application-fraud-data-months-since-rise-in-bot-enrollment https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-03-22/some-com...

chernevik 4y ago

Call me when some bureaucrat loses their job, and the overseeing legislators are turned out of office. This happens because our political systems have no incentives to prevent it from happening.

mistrial9 4y ago
.. and others signalling that when they find out, they do not care, are not surprised, and bother to do nothing about it.

ineedasername 4y ago

Federal aid requires attendance verification for each course a student takes. In my state, state-level aid adopted the same requirement. Why the heck does the California system do this too? Not to mention that even getting the aid in the first place requires filling out a FAFSA form-- difficult to provide fake tax returns-- and about 10% are randomly selected for verification as well.

lettergram 4y ago

This is called fraud and administrators should be being investigated for it. They get kickbacks for the government.

YATA2 4y ago

gumby 4y ago

Murphy’s law says whoever ends up trying to screen these out will not have read https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-... and thus will unwittingly screen out plenty of legitimate students as well. From the cases described in the article: Some people actually do have a given name as their family name and some even have the same name for both (I know a Peter Peter). Also some people only have a single name (consider the famous IBM Fellow Mohan, who types “C Mohan” when some system can’t deal with that case. Straightening this out will be tedious and costly. I feel bad for the actual students who were unable to register.

areyousure 4y ago
In case anyone is curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Mohan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Mohan

fareesh 4y ago

There are also services that sell .edu domains to avail discounts on various web products.

tamaharbor 4y ago

But absolutely no cheating in the 2020 elections. Go figure.

CryptoPunk 4y ago

And the Democratic Party claims voters should not be required to show photo ID to vote.

gcanyon 4y ago

How is this even remotely difficult to reduce? I say reduce instead of illuminate because there will always be some form of fraud. But at least make a real live person show up for class in order to get the money ¯\_(ツ)_/¯