Citrus has disenrolled over 380 fraudulent students this semester and has reached out to the chancellors’ office to help investigate and resolve the problem.
Joumana McGowan, vice president of academic affairs, said at a faculty senate meeting on April 28 the college has found over 380 fraudulent students and is working with other community colleges and sharing the components of what is happening at their schools to stop fraudulent activity.
Richard Rams, vice president of student services, said in an email interview that since this is an active investigation, the college is not prepared to report on a specific number of purges conducted to disenroll fraudulent student accounts.
The patterns that have been found to help identify those “phantom students” are:
- A group of students who enroll in the same five CRNs with the same class time same teacher
- Several students with the same name but with multiple variations.
- Students using international I.P. addresses
Instructors have been at the forefront of combating the fraudulent activities by dropping non-participants/non-attendees from courses.
“On the student services side, selecting students suspected of fraud for financial aid verification as authorized under federal law also is a proven strategy,” Rams said. “Phantom students do not respond to verification requests since they don’t have the appropriate credentials to meet verification requirements.”
Eight-week courses have also experienced mass amounts of fraudulent student enrollments.
“I do have one of the late start classes and it was one of the classes that was hit really hard; it enrolled at 90 and I had to drop before census 40 students,” Catie Bensacon, art history and appreciation professor, said at the faculty senate meeting April 28.
Instructors should now flag students suspected of fraudulent activity to go through the verification process with student services. McGowan said now that the eight-week courses have begun there will be continued vigilance on non-participant students.
“When it comes to fraud, it’s really everybody’s responsibility; and as an institution that receives Title IV funds, we want to be responsible to the community, to the taxpayers, to the students, to everyone involved,” Stephen Fahey, director of financial aid, said in a phone interview.
Fahey said when a student applies for FAFSA, their information goes through the federal central processing system, which he said runs data through Social Security, Homeland Security and other agencies. He said for a phantom student to access federal aid, they have to have somebody’s information.
“These are real people, meaning the identities were stolen, but these are actual social security numbers,” Fahey said.
Fahey said in most cases, the school detects fraud early and could recover financial aid money before it gets into pockets— but when it is withdrawn from BankMobile, it’s usually gone for good.
