Colleges have a new concern: “Ghost Students” – Rings Fraud with fishing energy to obtain millions in financial aid

Synthetic Or “ghosts” students refer to masses of fake or stolen identities used by fraudsters to apply the college applications and join thousands of submissions in minutes – usually during holidays, weekends, or at other times, admission employees will be bare bones. If you succeed, you will try to record fake students for grades and apply for financial assistance, and you often press real students who cannot get seats in the classrooms they need. I have even gave ghost Providing homework By using artificial intelligence – anything to try to keep it from the decline from the separation. Sometimes, all they will escape from is an e -mail address for the college. Security experts said, but even this has value, the fraudsters give a shell of legitimacy as a university student. The simple email address that ends in .EDU allows discounts on laptops, software and music broadcasting services, and allows those who use these students’ identities to apply for jobs in companies.

The Ministry of Education launched a National Program In June to clarify the theft of identity in colleges and request new Verification of identity Steps for Fall 2025, the beginning of the school year. Antelope Find 90 million dollars were spent for unqualified students, including $ 30 million in the stolen identities of the deceased individuals.

Kiran KodithalaFounder of the Technology Company N2N Services and Lighttleap.ai The percentage of fraudulent students in the California Community College system said throughout the country to gather ghost students, that the percentage of fraudulent students in the California Community College system is about 26 % through 75 colleges and 1.2 million requests. Outside California, the Lightletap system is found about one in five applications to be a ghost student. The fraud rate applies to 24 non -California colleges with approximately 340,000 requests that have been treated this summer.

In the rural Oregon, officials in Community Lynn College It is preparing for a fall 2025 attack from ghost students, DawnThe Dean of the Administration of Function, said, luck. The college was attacked for the first time in the fall of 2022, after it just launched a new application process designed to simplify the registration for students. At the end of this week, Lynn saw about 1,000 requests to fly across his system, which was very unusual for the college, which includes about 5,000 students.

Whiting and her team watched the usual fraud signs – symbols of the disgraceful area, email addresses and phone numbers across hundreds of applications. Whiting malfunction all 1,000 mail email addresses or so requires additional identity transfer measures. But the fraudsters are the focus. By the summer of 2023, ghosts followed a new approach to the infiltration of the system, filling seats in the sessions without any requirements. The college has moved to implement the request deposit of $ 25, although this step contradicts the institutional faith as a societal resource free of obstacles.

But the fraudsters are scared again. In the summer of 2024, about 300 requests flowed at the same time at the same time, White said, and all the school dropped from the classroom. Now, Lynn weighs whether an Amnesty International will be brought in a third party to help enhance its defenses. Witang indicated that her employees are the fraud award, but it does not consist of cybersecurity experts. Acceptance and faculty members often focus on educating students and making them in the right classes for their career path.

“We are open,” said Coleman Joyce, Vice President of Student Services in Lyn. “Make students go with more steps to register, adding more barriers and we are a community college. A number of our students are not intelligent to technology when they come here.”

in CaliforniaCommunity colleges are required to accept any qualified student and there is no application fee to submit an application. Kodithala said there is a discussion about whether colleges in other states will witness the same attack as California, especially if there are additional obstacles to clarify them in submission, registration and registration in classes such as depositing request or fees. He said that he has yet to run a chain with or without fees in place. In schools outside California, the rate ranges from 8 % to 15 % of fraudulent requests, Codithala said.

Craig Monsonand Minnesota StateThe chief information security personnel who supervises 26 community and technology colleges and seven universities said that the state uses artificial intelligence and participates with other schools and security federations to discover new tactics used by ghost students to try to infiltrate into school systems.

“Just as we benefit from artificial intelligence to protect ourselves, the attackers also continue to benefit from it in new and interesting ways,” Monson said. “It is a kind of arms race. Every six months, attackers tend to stop one way to do things and move to a different tactic.”

Monson and others refused in similar roles, commenting on the specified fraud signs they see this fall, but the fake students’ tactics a few years ago-which are no longer successful-the names of the makeup are involved, the random email addresses look similar, the addresses of itself and the phone numbers related to the applications over and over again. The attackers have since changed the gears.

For schools, the issue is caused by complexity. Community colleges are supposed to be open -up educational institutions, or within the reach of those who look forward to obtaining a classroom, working towards professional change, or following a passion. With California wrestling with swarms of ghost students, officials discussed the creation of nominal fees to add friction to the application system.

The Minnesota system includes three universities that receive low -order fees, four do not do so, as well as seven colleges with fees and 19 free colleges. However, Kodithala pointed out that adding the application fees calls for a credit card and gift card. Monson said he saw the same issue in Minnesota. Kodithla said that schools also believe that schools believe that the fraud will not pay $ 15 or $ 25 for more chance of thousands.

“It is easy for them to steal because they know that everything they had to do is to make a batch.”

Travis BlumVice President of Student Affairs and Registration in Michigan Community Bay Di Nuk CollegeHe said that the school did not see the legions of ghost students the way other schools in Michigan own, but they are ready if they did so. He said that the school has only about 2000 students on its location, as the employees carried out the process of reviewing the manual demand. Any application leads to additional doubts and asks the potential student to confirm his identity through the notary or a personal visit.

As a leader at the Community Education Corporation, Blume is struggling with the same issues of adding more friction to a system intended to be as available as possible. He said: “The community college revolves around the introduction and installation of people.”

However, despite the weak community institutions against fraud plans that support artificial intelligence, experts are working to protect the financial aid available to students.

Monson of Minnesota said: “Fraud in higher education is something that should be seen seriously and must be part of the comprehensive risk calculation.” “It is important that you have strong relationships with both local and federal law enforcement and with information exchange groups so that you can get the intelligence of the appropriate threat and be flexible in your responses. With the attackers change, we need to change with them.”