Scammer used 9/11 victim’s identity to cash out federal student aid

A scammer trying to cash in on federal and state student loan money reached a new low when he stole the identity of a young man who died during the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack.

So-called “ghost students” are an increasingly common scheme in which scammers create fake student profiles — often stealing the identity of real people, even those who have passed away — to fraudulently collect student aid money. One community college professor who has been trying to crack down on the scam recently discovered a student enrolled in her class was actually a 24 year old victim of 9/11, Open The Books found and shared exclusively with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“I saw this one and knew it was from the internet,” Kim Rich, criminal justice professor at Pierce College in Los Angeles, told Open the Books. “With less than six clicks. I found out this person was a 24-year-old victim of 9/11. It broke my heart, and it pissed me off.”

Rich said she sees fake students enroll in her classes every semester and has been working to find and report them for years. Another ghost student she purged had stolen the identity of an executive in Portugal, she told Open The Books.

Both fake students had collected financial aid, Rich found through university documents.

Scammers behind the ghost students are believed to steal as much as $1 billion in taxpayer money every year, according to an estimate from Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. At California community colleges, fake students make up approximately 34% of applicants.

Although the college’s president says the school is trying to address the issue, Prof. Rich insisted that “whatever methods they are using are not being successful.”

“If I can go through my rosters and eliminate 50 of my class, I can’t be the only class in the entire college this is happening to,” Rich told Open The Books.

Some of the fake students Rich finds have obvious errors on their accounts, such as duplicated names, odd symbols, or obviously fabricated student ID numbers. In one of her classes of 40 students, more than half were fake one semester. Some of the fake accounts have been traced back to overseas criminal enterprises.

While Rich claims the schools have tried to downplay the issue, she estimates if there is even a single fake student enrolled in each online class within the Los Angeles Community College District, that could mean at least $20 million in stolen federal financial aid each semester.

“Which in my opinion, is totally underestimating,” she said. “You’re going to tell me that the $10 million that the chancellor’s office is quoting is accurate?”

Along with the potential millions in stolen taxpayer funds, ghost students also occupy seats in real classes, shutting out actual students.

In April, all nine Republicans in California’s congressional delegation wrote to McMahon and Attorney General Pam Bondi urging them to address the ghost student issue.

“It represents a major misuse of public funds and a betrayal of the trust Californians place in their education institutions,” the letter reads. “We urge your respective Departments to conduct a transparent and independent investigation, provide regular updates to the public, and take immediate action to prevent further waste, fraud, and abuse of precious taxpayer dollars as the Congress and the President seek a consensus on how to curb wasteful federal spending. This crisis strikes at the heart of fairness and access to education in California at a time that our state is facing a financial crisis.”

The state has since audited three community colleges.

The issue is not unique to California, but the state’s colleges seem to be an easy target for these scammers. Minnesota recently discovered more than 7,000 potentially fraudulent applicants. Cases have also been discovered in Texas, Michigan, Oregon, New Jersey and New York.

“These fraudsters are committing a dual robbery: taxpayers have their money wasted while students who need educational opportunity miss out on aid and classroom seats,” Open the Books CEO John Hart told the DCNF. “Ultimately, federal financial aid can be better handled by agencies equipped to detect fraud as the Department of Education continues its rightful downsizing and elimination. In the meantime, it’s encouraging that Secretary McMahon understands the fraud is serious and happening at scale.”

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