California’s community college system is investigating what appears to be a large-scale fraud scheme, which involves more than 65,000 fraudulent financial aid applications filed by “students” who were likely bots.
Patrick Perry, director of policy, research, and data with the California Student Aid Commission, told the Los Angeles Times that he became suspicious during a routine check of federal financial aid records, when he noticed a dramatic increase of first-time applicants of a certain age range and income group within a short period. All were over 30 and earned less than $40,000 per year.
