The Department of Education recently issued a temporary rule requiring online students to show a legal government ID to colleges when enrolling for classes. The reason is scammers have flooded the admissions offices with fake students with real stolen identities – enrolling them into classes and poaching the student loan money, leaving the real students holding the bag.
The rise of artificial intelligence and the popularity of online classes have led to an explosion of financial aid fraud. Fake college enrollments have been surging as crime rings deploy "ghost students" – chatbots that join online classrooms and stay just long enough to collect a financial aid check.
According to The New York Post, professors are finding out that almost no one in their classes is real, and real students are crowded out of the courses, some of which are required for graduation.
Criminals stole at least $11.1 million in federal, state, and local financial aid from California community colleges last year that could not be recovered.
Bob Maginnis says this is only the start of the chaos.
"The manipulation of records and incursions upon personal identity and so forth is something that is just beginning to raise its ugly head," he tells AFN. "These things are smarter than we are, for the most part, and there're so many of them that if you're not careful, and they're in the wrong hands, they can rob you blind."
And as AI is thinking at the speed of light and able to access and do millions of things simultaneously, he says it is getting increasingly more difficult to stop.
"You can't be too careful in today's world," Maginnis asserts. "It's more than long passwords. It's more than double verification. You just have to be observant of everything around you."
The Education Department's new rule will apply only to first-time applicants for federal student aid for the summer term, affecting some 125,000 borrowers. The agency said it is developing more advanced screening for the fall.
