Right now, there’s another Isaías Alvarado wandering like a ghost through the halls of a public university in California. This apocryphal double moves with my data: name, social security number, date of birth. I’ve been trying for three months to convince the bureaucrats at that school of a basic truth: that I am me. I am not alone in this strange and complex identity theft scheme. Around 1.2 million fake admission applications directed at the state’s community colleges were detected in 2024. This is how sophisticated gangs of scammers, some of whom operate from abroad, stole more than 11 million dollars that year.
Those who run the California Community Colleges (CCC) system claim they are taking action and using artificial intelligence and other advanced methods to immediately detect fraudsters. However, it seems that this problem continues to overwhelm the government’s response capacity, which has yet to find a formula to stop them.
“We are constantly seeking to improve these measures to ensure that only authentic students can complete the application process and enroll,” stated the CCC Chancellor’s Office in a statement sent to EL PAÍS.
For me, the inconvenience suddenly revealed itself in mid-January, when I was trying to take some classes at a community college in Los Angeles. While creating a student account, the system indicated that a profile with all my personal information already existed. The only option to register was to recover the password, but the link to do so would go to a Hotmail account. Only the scammer would have access to it. The incident then had to be reported.
What followed was a frustrating process that highlights how difficult it can be for those affected to even confirm they are victims of this deception. There doesn’t seem to be a clear or centralized system to help anyone. Calls are transferred from one office to another. There is no protocol establishing who is responsible for taking the case, let alone resolving it. One has to deal with a bureaucracy that doesn’t fully understand the magnitude or urgency of the problem. At one point, they asked me to send photos of my passport and driver’s license, but even then they couldn’t verify my identity. The other Isaías Alvarado is still “taking classes” at that school today, and I don’t know what else he has done in my name.
How Scammers Operate
There are 116 community colleges in California, where more than 2.1 million students are enrolled, 48% of whom are Hispanic. These schools are low-cost and offer short programs of up to two years, basic courses, as well as transfer programs to universities that do award professional degrees. Anyone who applies for admission is admitted, at least if no one took their place before.
Since the pandemic, virtual and hybrid classes have increased, creating vulnerabilities that groups of scammers operating inside and outside the United States are exploiting. So far, no one has been criminally charged for this type of fraud.
The governing body of the CCC has detected that the so-called “ghost student” scam occurs in three phases. The first is when the fraudster only applies for university access. The second covers the stage from successfully passing the initial filters to attempts to register for courses offered by the institution. The third develops in a more dangerous territory for institutions, as the scammer remains in virtual classes until stealthily requesting financial aid from the government for books, food, housing, transportation, and other school needs.
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The criminals who have reached this stage have made a killing. In 2024 alone, through this method, they managed to improperly extract about 8.4 million dollars in federal aid and 2.7 million dollars in state assistance. That year, there were 1.2 million attempts at false enrollments, which accounted for as much as 31% of the total enrollment applications. Another headache: these faceless “students” occupy limited desks and leave many others out.
“It’s a huge problem,” stated Jason Williams, from the Office of the Inspector General of the federal Department of Education, to ABC. “By stealing identities… these school loans go unpaid,” he added.
Citing security reasons, the CCC Chancellor’s Office declined to reveal to this outlet which schools have been most affected. “It is fundamental to note that the fight against fraud is a continuous process that evolves as criminals continue to modify their attacks and employ increasingly sophisticated techniques,” the agency indicated. “As we improve in the fight against fraud, criminals adapt and change their approach.”
The administration of California’s public universities states that it has found it convenient to use artificial intelligence to identify suspicious data patterns “within a rapid response paradigm” in enrollment processes. “It is capable of identifying groups of fraudulent applications and enrollments,” it explained about the program.
A proposal that the CCC hopes will add to its list of strategies would be to require applicants to show a California government-issued driver’s license or verify their identity through the specialized ID.me platform.
“These strategic levels have been implemented to support efforts at both the state and local levels, ensuring that staff time and financial aid funds are allocated to real students,” the agency said.
This reliance on automatic systems also reveals another underlying problem. In recent years, the CCC lost 20% of its workforce due to resignations and voluntary retirements. Due to lack of budget, these vacancies were never filled with new hires.
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