Trump's Department of Education stopped a billion dollars in fraud last year.
Now a top official is naming names about who let it happen in the first place.
Under Secretary Nicholas Kent just pointed his finger at California and Minnesota as the worst offenders for letting "ghost students" steal taxpayer money meant for real kids trying to get an education.
How Biden Administration Removed FAFSA Fraud Controls
Here's what happened under Biden.
When COVID hit, colleges moved classes online.
Biden's Education Department responded by removing the ID verification requirements that had been catching fraud for years.
They diverted the fraud-detection staff to work on Biden's illegal loan forgiveness scheme instead.
The result was predictable.
In California alone, scammers filed 1.2 million fake applications to community colleges in 2024.
One in three applications to California community colleges was fake.
At least $10 million in federal aid vanished into criminal networks.
Some colleges flagged 70% of their applicants as suspicious.
Minnesota wasn't much better.
Riverland Community College averaged over 100 fraudulent applications per year.
Century College had so many fake students that one history instructor said 15% of his class was "basically an organized crime ring."
The College of Southern Nevada wrote off $7.4 million in a single semester.
Ghost Students: How Identity Theft Targets Financial Aid
These aren't confused freshmen who drop out.
Kent explained the scam works like this: criminals create fake identities with no intention of actually attending college.
"What we see often in terms of financial aid fraud are what we call ghost students, and these are students who really never intend to enroll in post-secondary education," he said. "They never intend to take classes and to graduate. They enroll for the sole purpose of defrauding the federal student aid program."
The fraudsters use stolen identities or AI bots to create fake students.
They fill out FAFSA forms, get accepted, trigger financial aid disbursements, and disappear.
Some show up once or twice to avoid detection, then vanish with the cash.
The sophisticated ones use AI to submit homework assignments so professors think they're real students.
Many operate from abroad, using VPNs to mask their location.
The really brazen ones enrolled in hundreds of classes at once.
At Lane Community College in Oregon, officials saw 1,000 applications flood their system in a single weekend—highly unusual for a school with 5,000 students.
Santiago Canyon College in California dropped more than 10,000 fake enrollments.
Foothill-De Anza Community College District received 26,000 applications in 2024—officials flagged 10,000 for fraud before classes even started.
Real Students And Taxpayers Pay The Price For Fraud
This isn't a victimless crime.
Real students trying to get an education found themselves waitlisted because ghost students occupied the seats.
Low-income kids who needed Pell Grants watched the money disappear into criminal pockets instead.
Colleges lost millions that should have funded classrooms and faculty.
Professors got excited their classes were full for the first time ever, only to discover they were teaching to empty seats and AI bots.
Taxpayers bankrolled an organized crime spree targeting the education system.
The Biden administration's Department of Education review found $90 million went to ineligible students.
That included $30 million paid to dead people whose identities were stolen.
Trump Department Of Education Stops $1 Billion In Fraud
The Trump administration implemented what Kent called "very strict fraud controls" starting in summer 2025.
The solution was embarrassingly simple: check IDs.
"And so, over the summer, we implemented very strict fraud controls on the FAFSA, the form that students use to apply for federal student aid, including mandatory identification checks for first-time student aid applicants, to ensure that every applicant is a real student and not a ghost student or an AI bot."
Kent said it was "inconceivable" that Biden hadn't required this basic safeguard.
The results came fast.
Within the first week of the new system, officials flagged almost 150,000 suspect identities.
Over the full year, Trump's Education Department prevented more than $1 billion in fraud.
Kent made clear colleges themselves bear responsibility too.
"So, we're also holding institutions accountable for understanding that if fraud is on your campus, you should know about it and you should be putting your own fraud detection efforts in place," he said.
Some colleges turned a blind eye because they benefited from the funding.
Trump's team is now holding institutions accountable for detecting fraud instead of profiting from it.
Kent promised aggressive enforcement: "We're going to do everything that we can under the secretary's leadership to ensure that we're going after bad guys, and we're going to capture them, and we're going to prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law."
California and Minnesota officials responded with predictable bureaucratic deflection.
Minnesota's Office of Higher Education claimed FAFSA verification happens at the federal level, not theirs.
California's community college system said they're now using AI tools and driver's license verification.
Both states only started taking fraud seriously after Trump's team exposed them.
The bigger question is why it took a new administration to implement the most basic anti-fraud measure imaginable—checking whether applicants are real people.
Biden's Department of Education had four years to figure this out.
Instead, they removed safeguards and diverted fraud-detection resources to illegal loan forgiveness schemes.
The scammers noticed, and they took full advantage.
Now Trump's people are cleaning up the mess, one fake student at a time.
Sources:
- Peter D'Abrosca, "Top Trump admin education official exposes blue state financial aid fraud offenders," Fox News, January 21, 2026.
- "U.S. Department of Education to Implement New Identity Validation Processes to Combat Student Aid Fraud," U.S. Department of Education Press Release, June 2025.
- "'Ghost' students are hijacking millions from colleges," Fortune, June 12, 2025.
- "Colleges have a new worry: 'Ghost students'—AI powered fraud rings angling to get millions in financial aid," Fortune, August 23, 2025.
- "Trump administration stops $1 billion in student aid fraud schemes," Fox News, December 11, 2025.
- "Ghost Students: The $180M Fraud Problem Haunting Colleges and Universities," Equifax Newsroom, 2025.
- "US Dept. of Education launches crackdown on student aid fraud with new ID verification rules," Biometric Update, June 9, 2025.