California’s Disastrously Run College Financial Aid Program Is Filled With Fake ‘ChatGPT’ Students

Authored by Victoria Taft via PJMedia.com,

First, you must admit you have a problem. 

It’s unclear the state of California has done that after the disastrously run COVID-era unemployment scam and the billions unaccounted for in payouts to grifters in the Homeless Industrial Complex. Medicaid for all illegal aliens is draining the system for citizens. And now this. California’s community college financial aid program is being plundered by scammers, grifters, and criminals. At least 25% of the money being given out in loans is sent to imaginary people who appear to be using AI to complete assignments, collect checks, and then disappear.

Indeed, as CalMatters reported, the number of these “Pell runners” has grown dramatically. 

“After enrolling at a community college they apply for a federal Pell grant, collect as much as $7,400, then vanish,” according to the California Community College Chancellor’s Office. 

As usual, during COVID, paddle boarding alone, gathering with friends, and meeting in a classroom were verboten, but stealing from the state was a breeze. The people in charge of watching over the money—looking at you Julie Su and Gavin Newsom— crammed the money into one of those T-shirt guns and fired it in the general direction of those they thought might need it: prisoners, Nigerian princes, and fake students.

Good luck passing an audit. 

CalMatters reported:

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government loosened some restrictions around financial aid, making it easier for students to prove they were eligible, and provided special one-time grants to help keep them enrolled. Once these pandemic-era exceptions ended in 2023 and some classes returned to in-person instruction, college officials said they expected fraud to subside. 

It hasn’t. In January, the chancellor’s office suspected 25% of college applicants were fraudulent, said Paul Feist, a spokesperson for the office. 

“This is getting significantly worse,” said Todd Coston, an associate vice chancellor with the Kern Community College District. He said that last year, “something changed and all of a sudden everything spiked like crazy.”

And here’s the reason why this problem for taxpayers may continue.

Stephen Frank reports that instructors know that cutting fake students means that they won’t get funding for those students. 

In 2023, librarian Heather Dodge started to notice something odd about the students who took her online research course at Berkeley City College. To connect with students and make the class more engaging, Dodge said she always began the course by asking students to submit a video introducing themselves using their webcam or an iPhone. 

“It’s a very low bar,” she said, but “I started noticing that there would be a handful of students that wouldn’t submit that assignment in the first week.” First, she would send them a message, and then, if they still didn’t respond, she’d drop them from the class.

She wanted to seem inclusive, worrying about whether students were having tech problems. But her biggest issue was how her dropping enrollments would look to the bean counters who divvy up the money to schools.

Dodge says,  “If they see I’m running a class that starts with 35 students and ends with 15, that looks terrible.”

As with California voter registration, voter rolls, and applying for free state money, “many colleges don’t independently verify a student’s address or identity.” That’s right: nobody checks.

When the schools tried to give illegal aliens or kids in the foster system who had no ID a break, “the bots figured that out,” according to Nicole Albo-Lopez, the deputy chancellor for the Los Angeles Community College District.

In 2023, three women were indicted for using prisoners’ names to qualify for student loans at California community colleges. They ran off with more than $1 million. Only one admitted guilt. The other two were freed until trial. There are no public reports we can find that these other two women were ever penalized for allegedly stealing the money. 

And good luck if you want California to stop the stupid. One year ago, California adopted a program to pay community college students for their time in class and spent doing homework. We’re not kidding. The taxpayers pay students in this pilot program the going rate for minimum wage, which in California is between $16.50 and $20/hour for fast food workers. 

Gee, I wonder if anyone is keeping the books on this program. 

Currently, California colleges have access to an online ID verification program but don’t require students to use it. However, for the sake of the people paying the bills, it sure sounds like it’s way past time for them to require it.  

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It’s the least they could do for the poor saps paying the bills. 

California should sure use a dose of DOGE. 

Nationally, Elon Musk and DOGE are bringing much-needed accountability to our out-of-control bureaucracy as they take a chainsaw to rampant waste, fraud, and abuse.