Fraud in California community colleges triggers call for Trump investigation

April 26, 2025 By Adam Echelman 1 Comment

by Adam Echelman


This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Nine Republican U.S. representatives are calling on U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate financial aid fraud at California’s community colleges. In a separate letter sent Wednesday, state Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, a West Covina Democrat, asked the state to conduct its own audit on the matter.


Click Here to Subscribe to the California Political Review

This rare moment of bipartisan concern comes after CalMatters reported that fake community college students have stolen more than $10 million in federal financial aid and more than $3 million in state aid in the last 12 months. 

In their April 11 letter to Bondi and McMahon, which cites CalMatters’ reporting, California’s Republican representatives say that investigating fraud at California’s community colleges should be part of President Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to “curb wasteful federal spending.”  

The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office has “not been contacted by the U.S. Department of Education or the U.S. Attorney General about an investigation,” said Chris Ferguson, one of the office’s executive vice chancellors, in an email to CalMatters Thursday.

Assemblymember Rubio’s letter calls for a state audit that would examine the scope of fraud and the efforts to prevent it. State legislators will decide this June whether to pursue that audit, which could take years to complete. 

California community colleges have been struggling to address fake students and financial aid fraud for years. Last spring, CalMatters reported that scammers continued to evade detection and that community colleges reported giving away over $5 million in federal funds and over $1.5 million in state and local aid. Earlier this month, CalMatters found the problem is only getting worse. 

“Allowing this rise in fraud to go unaddressed is negligent on the Community College system, as these bad actors take away opportunities from real students in impacted courses such as accounting, nursing, etc,” wrote the California Republican representatives in their letter.

While students, faculty and community college administrators in California agree that it’s a serious and growing problem, they question whether an investigation or an audit will lead to a better solution. 

Fraud is “a legitimate concern,” said Larry Galizio, president of the Community College League of California, which represents the interests of the state’s 73 community college districts — but the letter to the education department and the attorney general is “disingenuous” and “just flat wrong” in claiming that it’s gone unaddressed. 

California has allocated more than $150 million since 2022 to improve cybersecurity at its community colleges. 

“Blaming the victim and then cutting resources to the very entities that are trying to combat the fraud is not a policy approach that’s going to be effective,” Galizio said.

Click here to read the full article in CalMatters

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: , ,

Fake student aid: California colleges detect more fraudsters stealing millions

April 10, 2025 By Adam Echelman 1 Comment

BY ADAM ECHELMAN

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

For years, scammers have targeted community colleges across the state, posing as students in order to steal money from scholarships or government financial aid.

Click Here to Subscribe to the California Political Review

Recent state reports suggest the problem is getting worse, and college leaders say they’re worried that the Trump administration’s cuts to the U.S. Department of Education could hamper fraud prevention and investigations.  

In 2021, the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office reported that about 20% of college applicants were likely fake. In January 2024, the state said it was up to about 25%. 

Now it’s around 34%, according to the most recent data from the last calendar year. “Those are all the ones that are stopped,” said John Hetts, executive vice chancellor for the data team at the chancellor’s office.

The scammers that aren’t stopped have stolen millions in taxpayer dollars. CalMatters reported that these fake students received more than $5 million from the federal government and nearly $1.5 million from the state, according to anonymized reports that colleges submitted to the state from September 2021 through December 2023. 

Faculty say they’re exasperated from working as detectives, trying to suss out which students are real. They say scammers are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence to infiltrate classes, using tools like ChatGPT to pose as students. Students say these fraudsters are taking coveted seats and preventing them from enrolling in classes they need to graduate. 

In the last 12 months, colleges reported giving more than $10 million in federal dollars to fake students and over $3 million in state money. Data from the first few months of 2025 show that colleges have already given away more than $3 million in federal aid and over $700,000 in state dollars. 

The scope of fraud is “relatively small,” said Chris Ferguson, a finance executive at the chancellor’s office, especially when compared to the roughly $1.7 billion in federal aid and $1.5 billion in state aid given to California’s community college students last year. He also said it’s likely that colleges have improved their ability to detect fraud over time, potentially inflating the reporting numbers.

State lawmakers have allocated roughly $150 million toward cybersecurity since 2022, and the chancellor’s office has brought in numerous tech companies — including ID.Me, N2N, and LexisNexis — to help authenticate students. But Hetts said none of these interventions will ever completely eliminate fraud because each time the state gets better at fighting fraud, the bad actors adapt — the tech equivalent to the “Red Queen hypothesis.”

College leaders also rely on the federal education department to help find scammers. The department is broadly responsible for administering federal financial aid and for preventing and investigating related fraud. The office that administers federal aid has lost about half of its staff through layoffs, voluntary buyouts and retirements. California Attorney General Rob Bonta recently joined other Democratic attorneys general in suing the Trump administration over these cuts, alleging that they violate the U.S. Constitution. 

Although not technically part of the lawsuit or the layoffs, the education department’s Office of Inspector General, which is responsible for fraud detection, has also lost staff due to buyouts and early retirements. Since Oct. 1, the Office of Inspector General has lost “more than 20% of its staff,” said Catherine Grant, a spokesperson for the office, including “experienced auditors and investigators.”

“As for how these staffing changes affect the Office of Inspector General’s ability to investigate student aid fraud in California, we are committed to fighting student aid fraud wherever we find it,” Grant said. “But we are limited with what we can do based on our limited resources.”

Fake students using AI

Click here to read the full article in CalMatters

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: , ,

Undocumented Students Qualify for Financial Aid in California. Why Aren’t More of Them Using It?

May 5, 2023 By Carmen Gonzalez 4 Comments

When Deysi Mojica received her acceptance to UC Riverside, she was excited. Not only had she overcome her high school’s lack of resources to help undocumented students like herself apply to college, but the university was offering a financial aid package that would make her college dream possible.

“Even though I am undocumented,” said Mojica, now a first-year student, “the amount of money that they gave me was basically covering all my expenses.” 

But an unexpected $13,000 charge from the university just before she was due to start classes quickly changed her excitement into confusion, leaving her wondering where the money she was awarded had gone. It was only after repeated calls to the financial aid office, Mojica said, that a helpful student assistant who was also undocumented gave her the information that saved her from dropping out: Her aid package was held up because a signature was missing from one of her application forms.

Like Mojica, many undocumented students lack accurate information about applying for financial aid or find the process intimidating. California has since 2011 allowed undocumented students to receive financial aid from the state and its public universities if they meet certain eligibility requirements. But students, advocates, and even the California Student Aid Commission itself say the aid application developed under a state law known as the California Dream Act is unnecessarily complex, not enough college staff are trained to advise students about it, and campus departments don’t collaborate well when processing applications. As a result, they say, many undocumented students are missing out on aid for which they qualify.

Only 14% of undocumented students in California receive any form of financial aid to pursue higher education, according to a recent California Student Aid Commission report. Of the nearly 45,000 undocumented students who applied for financial aid for this past academic year, fewer than 30% ultimately enrolled in school and received aid.

“What we know is we’ve got a lot of students that are willing and going through the process, but they’re not getting the financial aid support,” said Marlene Garcia, executive director of the student aid commission. “I think that’s a starting point to analyze that there is a problem here.”

One of the problems Garcia cited: Verifying eligibility for the aid can be cumbersome and fear-inducing to undocumented students concerned about the risks of sharing their personal information.

California exempts undocumented students from paying nonresident tuition if they spent three years at, and received a degree, diploma or certificate from a California high school or community college. When those students want to apply for financial aid, they must also submit a document — also known as an AB540 affidavit —  to the campus they plan to attend verifying they qualify for the exemption and promising to legalize their immigration status as soon as possible.  

The student aid commission then randomly selects 20% of students for verification that the information they reported in their applications is accurate. 

But individual campuses do the actual verifying, and there is no statewide standard. 

California State University Chico and American River College, for example, accept a simple statement from students that they are eligible and only require extra documents if there is conflicting information in their applications, according to the student aid commission. But other campuses require much more information, such as W-2 forms, IRS tax transcripts, and/or household size information.

That’s when some students fall through the cracks, said Sergio Belloso, a counselor at Santa Monica College’s Dream Resource Center, which provides legal, mental health and financial aid counseling services for the college’s undocumented students. 

“Sometimes students just stop that process, because they’re like, ‘I don’t want to give them my information,’ ” Belloso said.

The affidavit and financial aid application also must be sent to different departments on campus, often causing delays and confusion for students.

“What we know is that we’ve got a lot of students that are willing and going through the process, but they’re not getting the financial aid support.”MARLENE GARCIA, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CALIFORNIA STUDENT AID COMMISSION

At Santa Monica College, the Dream Resource Center serves on average 200 undocumented students per semester, Belloso said. Although tuition at California community colleges is just $46 per credit hour, or free on some campuses, many students, regardless of immigration status, use financial aid to cover additional expenses such as textbooks, transportation, and living costs. 

Belloso said he and other center staff spend a large portion of their time and resources on helping students get financial aid, including those who don’t qualify for aid and in-state tuition.  If other campus staff members were better trained to understand financial aid for undocumented students, the center would have more time to explore other aspects of its mission, such as providing legal help, he said.  

Cristina Sanchez, who provides drop-in counseling to undocumented students at Solano College, said she started her job right after graduating from college with little more than an Excel spreadsheet with student contact information. As the sole, part-time staff member tasked with supporting about 200 undocumented students, Sanchez is also concerned the students she serves may not be getting the financial aid information they need. 

“I was not given any training or anything like that, it was kind of like, ‘Here you go,’” Sanchez said. “So it’s been a lot of teaching myself or going out of my way to learn more, because I’m not undocumented.” 

Sanchez said a lot of times she is sending students to other counselors and financial aid officers, creating a game of hot potato and potential communication breakdowns between campus departments. 

Strengthening campus centers for undocumented students could help such students persist and navigate financial aid difficulties, students and counselors said. Even though the staff at UC Riverside’s Undocumented Student Programs couldn’t fix Mojica’s financial aid problem, she said, they welcomed her to campus, apologized for the difficulties she was having and even helped her find a work-study job doing social media for an undocumented student organization. Mojica said the support helped her feel like she belonged on campus.

“They were super welcoming. They spoke to my mom, started telling me about our (food) pantry and about the groceries. Although I didn’t ask, they were already giving me so much information,” said Mojica. “It had a big impact on me.”

The center, which supports more than 600 students, one of the largest undocumented student populations among UC campuses, plans to hire a dedicated counselor to assist undocumented students with their financial aid applications. 

Meanwhile, the student aid commission is working to tackle some of the issues in the Dream Act application process. It has recommended reducing the percentage of applications requiring verification and allowing Dream Act applicants to receive text message updates on the status of their aid. 

The commission is also sponsoring Assembly Bill 1540, introduced by Los Angeles Democratic Assemblymember Mike Fong, which would allow undocumented students to fill out a single application for both their financial aid and residency. It’s currently under consideration in the appropriations committee. 

“We think that it should be intuitive. Students shouldn’t have to go through a maze to figure out how to get financial aid,” said Garcia. “The financial aid system should meet students where they’re at more effectively.”

Although both Sanchez and Belloso are excited to see a more streamlined application for students, Belloso feels there is still more that can be done to help undocumented students pursue higher education. He hopes campuses and the aid commission will collect and share campus-level data on how many undocumented students are applying for and receiving aid, so counselors like him can better support them. More financial aid training for other campus staff would also help, he said.

Click here to read the full article in CalMatters

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: , ,