[HN Gopher] 65k fake students enrolled in the California junior ...
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65k fake students enrolled in the California junior college system
Author : SQL2219
Score : 157 points
Date : 2022-05-08 13:06 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (openthebooks.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (openthebooks.substack.com)
| lifeplusplus wrote:
| If I remember filling out FAFSA it required SSN didn't it?
| Cerium wrote:
| Correct. I don't see a path to direct financial benefits with a
| poorly created fake enrollment.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| You assume that the SSN is some kind a magic code. The
| government has long undermined the use of the SSN for
| accountability or fidelity. It's essentially a
| slave/serf/property tracking number, the fact that it is abused
| by con artists/criminals is wholly immaterial to the rulers.
| It's why they don't care that fraudulent SSNs are being used by
| illegals too.
|
| You are making assumptions about the motivations of the system
| being of good faith. There is ample evidence and multiple
| proofs that such is not the case.
|
| The same applies to the whole education funding scheme,
| including FAFSA. It's essentially a money laundering scheme to
| support the financial enslavement of people through debt in
| order to participate and be conditioned as an alpha slave that
| is also locked into the system financially.
|
| There is no incentive to lower the cost of "education". The
| incentive is to lock you into having to pay off more and more
| tokens/currency that you get for doing favors for your masters.
| The only reason why the rulers are even just toying with the
| student loan debt forgiveness is because there's a slave revolt
| brewing among certain segments of the body of slaves/serfs.
| kwatsonafter wrote:
| Please provide this, "ample evidence" and, "multiple proofs"
| that, "this" (what?) is the case. Edgelording about how
| society hasn't lived up to your expectations as a modern
| human being (that apparently didn't go to college?) I'm
| inclined to hear you out but you read like a 22-year-old that
| spends too much time on 4Chan.
| Jerrrry wrote:
| FAFSA checks the applicants SSN against their name, date of
| birth, and homeland security.
|
| There is little room for fraud outside of blatant identity
| theft.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this is an awful interpretation and of course it does not
| cover the entire situation, however, based on decades of real
| life interaction, I believe this is partly true.
| datalopers wrote:
| Please good people, I am in haste! Who lives in that castle?
| bushbaba wrote:
| Don't you need a SSN or Tax I'd to get the financial aid.
|
| At least I remember needing that info to register for university
| in another state.
| reboot81 wrote:
| In Sweden any financial aid to students are revoked if you dont
| get a grade. If you apply a second time, after failing classes
| you simply dont get aid until your grades improve. Aid is only
| paid out a month at a time. Also, you have to apply using
| digital-ID (BankID) for both classes and aid, theres no way to
| cheat. This way, fraud is unheard of. Educational aid, if paid
| out erroneously is collected more aggressively than taxes.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| In America, the vast majority of financial aid to students is
| revoked if they fail their classes. Not sure how often aid is
| given out, but 1 month vs 4 isn't a big difference.
|
| I haven't heard much of any America specific big time fraud in
| this area either. If any implication was this article. That
| doesn't count since the article isn't saying aid is happening
| unlike Sweden.
| jmeister wrote:
| The Scandinavia-fetishizing American progressives tend to
| ignore this.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| How do you think most Govt grants including the biggest pell
| grant works. Same thing. You can't keep failing.
| YATA1 wrote:
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" Rich said administrators have focused more on ensuring that
| real students don't get accidentally dropped from classes."_
|
| - _" "The school is leaving the fake students in," she said. "The
| school is afraid if they admit the fraud, they're on the hook for
| allowing the fraud and having to pay it back.""_
|
| It's also possible administrators are the ones putting the fake
| students in. They're the ones in the easiest position to do this
| fraud.
|
| Like in the Yale story from last month:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30849862
| [deleted]
| xbar wrote:
| It is possible. It is also possible that it was you. Or me. And
| in this case, equally likely. That is significantly different
| from the Yale case where someone with purse strings management
| was committing fraud.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| No not equally likely, two randos on the internet being as
| likely as the guy who is immediate to the scam?
| mod wrote:
| I agree, but perhaps he meant something more like: "There's
| about as much evidence to convict [the guy] as there is to
| convict you or me."
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| I would say not even, circumstantial evidence already is
| more. There just isn't enough for a conviction.
|
| It's premature. There has to be a whole process.
|
| That being said, college administrators are masters at
| dodging the courtroom, and keeping people out of the
| courtroom. I imagine they have some ideas how to do it
| for themselves as well.
| chernevik wrote:
| Call me when some bureaucrat loses their job, and the overseeing
| legislators are turned out of office.
|
| This happens because our political systems have no incentives to
| prevent it from happening.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| .. and others signalling that when they find out, they do not
| care, are not surprised, and bother to do nothing about it.
| ryantgtg wrote:
| LA Times has been covering this story, as well (featuring the
| same instructor sleuth):
| https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-12-17/fake-stu...
|
| https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-03-22/some-com...
| newbamboo wrote:
| "The financial aid administrators at Pierce College say it's not
| their job"
|
| Make them legally accountable.
|
| Banks can't assist fraudsters and then say "not my job." The
| administrators should be jailed or lending to colleges with this
| problem should stop.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Interesting aside: Pierce College is where Kevin Mitnick took
| classes.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Maybe going all the way to legally accountable is a bit much
| but the incentive not to waste other people's money is too damn
| low these days. You see it in every context and it's so
| frustrating.
| newbamboo wrote:
| Why would it be a bit much?
|
| Banks can't give out fake loans. They try to all the time and
| are rightfully regulated/fined/charged when they do.
|
| Banks giving out bad loans caused the 2008 collapse. Student
| loans will one day cause a similar problem but it won't be
| big banks going bankrupt, it will be us. Hearing that 20% are
| obvious fraud doesn't even surprise anyone. Imagine a bank
| saying 20% of their loans are fraud but it's "not their job"
| to check that loans are given to anonymous recipients who
| don't bother to provide even a fake name!
|
| It's a crime. Like the banks, the people at the top are aware
| but profit off doing nothing. That they work for the
| taxpayers just makes it that much more criminal, not less!
| tamaharbor wrote:
| But absolutely no cheating in the 2020 elections. Go figure.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> But Rich believes that these colleges do fear enrollment drops
| if they remove the fake accounts.
|
| And then more quotes back that up.
|
| Just make people register on site. Still via computer but in
| person. Problem solved. This is community college where everyone
| is local.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| There are no reasons for the college to identify fake students,
| or event prevent it in the future. higher (apparent) enrollment
| justifies larger budgets and funding. And it's not their money
| being given away.
| spicyusername wrote:
| Seems like a perfect storm of harmful incentives, no oversight,
| and weak political leadership. It's a great demonstration of how
| legislators (and the public) need to remember that policies have
| to work in the real world with real world constraints and not
| just on paper.
|
| It's good that some measures are planned to help prevent the
| fraud, but it's frustrating how slow they are to get implemented.
| donthellbanme wrote:
| Depends on the school, but some will prosecute.
|
| My local community college woke up their sleepy 15 unit cop
| squad, and worked with financial aid, in order to prosecute a few
| people doing it. (A sleepy community college with 15
| cops/detectives. There's a state law requiring cops per student
| ratio regardless of crime which is basically zero. They don't do
| anything besides ticket cars.)
|
| This is what we pay our police to investigate.
|
| The couple in Marin County signed up for classes, and got federal
| aid. They told their friends and it was a popular way to make a
| few grand, but their public outing stopped the scam. They always
| showed up to the first class though.
|
| Poor people will do sketch chit in order to get ahead. Rich
| people cheat better, in greater numbers, but don't get caught.
| (According to professor Cartman. "You know how white people get
| ahead? They cheat, but they call it, I miss interpreted the
| ruuules. I'm looking at you Covid business fraudsters, or moral
| fraudsters.)
| shrubble wrote:
| This reminds me of Roman times, when generals would inflate the
| number of soldiers under them, get paid then pocket the
| difference.
|
| Or a more recent example, Afghanistan:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59230564
| andai wrote:
| >The former minister said the numbers may have been inflated by
| more than six times, and included "desertions [and] martyrs who
| were never accounted for because some of the commanders would
| keep their bank cards" and withdraw their salaries, he alleged.
|
| wtf
| zw123456 wrote:
| That reminds me of this scam that this director at a BIG
| company I used to work at did. He got SSN's of dead people and
| made fake resume's and interviewed himself and hired them. Then
| collected their paychecks. Eventually he got caught of course,
| but big companies are funny how they don't like things like
| that getting out because it makes them look back and would
| shake investor confidence etc. So they just let him go, didn't
| prosecute or even try to get the money back, just swept it
| under the rug. I heard a year or so later he was at another big
| company with the same title and job. No idea if he was still
| doing that but would not surprise me if he continued doing
| unscrupulous things.
|
| Unfortunately, that type of thing seems to happen a lot in
| large bureaucracies for those same types of reasons, whether
| governments, big business or whatever, they want to sweep
| mistakes like that under the rug. Hopefully they plug the hole
| before doing that. One can hope.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Going to call BS on that one. Employers have been required to
| physically verify employment authorization documents (i.e.,
| SSN or passport) _since 1986._ (https://www.uscis.gov/i-9-cen
| tral/form-i-9-resources/handboo...)
|
| Work authorization status also affects a number of things
| related to payroll. So it's not a trivial issue for one
| person, acting alone, to make up a bunch of fake employees.
| In order to get away with something like this in real life,
| there would have to have been someone else at the company in
| on the fraud (since, as you claim, it's a "BIG" company).
|
| And since payroll is involved, you are looking at several
| federal and state felonies, which means its not the company's
| choice to file charges or not. Multiple state and federal
| agencies would pursue this even if the company did not.
|
| This story would have been believable if you had said it was
| at a small startup without an HR department.
| zw123456 wrote:
| it was in 1984 and it was a telco. and there have been
| other examples of the main point I was making which is that
| wrong doing gets swept under the rug by bureaucracies to
| avoid embarrassment. Just a few years ago a department head
| was putting through PO's for expensive equipment and
| approving it himself and then selling it on ebay. He got
| caught, they fired him but did not press charges. Me moved
| to another company and as I have seen many times, same
| title.
|
| I have seen numerous examples of this over the years in
| both big companies and start ups. it happens.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| notice that Biometric Identification company posting the very
| first comment in that article comment section. While other
| YNews readers casually promote constant surveillance, I for
| one, am steadfastly, actively against biometric tagging for
| benefits, constant and automated surveillance against the
| powerless for violations, and no-recourse bureaucracies with
| guranteed revenue.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Happens all over the place. In developing countries, work as a
| porter can be lucrative, especially because of the tips
| travelers give at the end. It's common for the number of
| porters at the tipping gathering to exceed the number of
| porters who actually worked the trip. The travelers usually
| don't have time or focus for learning to identify all of the
| porters so it's easy to get away with. Those who only show up
| at the end for a tip are expected to share part of the tip with
| the porters who kept silent about this.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Here in California, I believe I have seen administrators cover up
| enrollment irregularity (direct fraud?), even before covid-19, in
| the Hayward Adult School -- English as a Second Language (ESL)
| program, in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The administrators
| are cool like lawyers, but now reading this, it all fits.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| It may have been active "cover up" - but doesn't need to be (or
| have been). It could be just passively ignoring and not being
| curious about fraud that benefits you. More (apparent) students
| benefits the school.
|
| Suppose I'm running a tech company and a bunch of "users" are
| actually non-engaged, fake accounts. If my valuation is based
| at least in part on how many users I have, there is not a lot
| of incentive to go actively looking for, eliminating or
| preventing these fake accounts. I may even continue to believe
| that they are all real, engaged users and not even consider the
| alternative.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| Wouldn't surprise me if the schools also get some central
| planning committee money and therefore are not incentivized and
| even negatively incentivized to do anything at all about it.
| They don't care as long as they get theirs. It's one of the
| many cancerous patterns that emerge from any kind of central
| planning/"communist" type system.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Aren't there extra steps required for actually getting the aid
| dollars where they confirm you are a real person? All this seems
| to do is get you a .EDU email address (which is useful on its own
| for getting discounts and such)
| rob_c wrote:
| "screenshots" of printouts... sounds like a typical academic
| institutional farce. Sounds like it impacted other states too,
| but I'm willing to bet certain states reduced the barrier to
| exploitation to zero and they wonder why it was an attractive
| target?
|
| reaping and sowing springs to mind
| alloai wrote:
| I personally came across some of these situations, they sell
| unlimited onedrive storage or google drive storage , which comes
| from EDU domains.
| AvocadoPanic wrote:
| California (insert project / program) leads to massive fraud
| isn't a new headline.
|
| Where's the vendor Xap in this?
|
| Were they not obligated to deliver a application system resistant
| to obvious forms of fraud and abuse? I know they're primarily an
| Education software vendor but this seems especially poor.
| orware wrote:
| XAP is the old system, but I don't think it's in use anymore
| (back then it was just "CCCApply").
|
| The current system, now called "OpenCCCApply", was mostly
| developed by a team from Unicon (https://www.unicon.net/),
| along with folks within the CCCTechCenter team of my memory
| /understanding is correct (I'm not sure if it's managed jointly
| though, or if only a CCCTechCenter team mostly manages it now
| though since I never heard those types of details).
|
| A redesign/modernization effort however sounds...expensive.
| lettergram wrote:
| This is called fraud and administrators should be being
| investigated for it. They get kickbacks for the government.
| yawaramin wrote:
| > He shows the bot automatically filling out a Contra Costa
| College application with fake personal information, and within
| seven minutes, he has enrolled at Contra Costa College as Ivan N.
| Atkinson for the fall 2020 term.
|
| A honeypot or a captcha would probably reduce the scale of the
| fraudulent sign-ups quite a lot.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| A bunch of The Bachelor contestants were also caught taking
| borderline fraudulent PPP loans.
|
| https://pagesix.com/2021/06/28/tayshia-adams-and-more-bachel...
|
| These covid programs were certainly a massive handout to the
| unscrupulous. I feel sorry for those who worked hard and lived
| frugally, just to get steamrolled by the government money
| printer.
|
| And look how reluctant the Fed and Fiscal were to reign in any of
| the madness. 0 moves until 8% CPI. Can't have housing appreciate
| at 10% instead of 20%, or stocks at 10 instead of 30 now, can we?
|
| Never seen a class of people so eager to take wealth/future
| prosperity from their children
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _A bunch of The Bachelor contestants were also caught taking
| borderline fraudulent PPP loans.
|
| https://pagesix.com/2021/06/28/tayshia-adams-and-more-
| bachel..._
|
| If you had bothered to follow up on that, you would have
| learned that all of these Bachelor(ette) contestants _employed
| other people_ and used the PPP loans to pay those salaries
| during the PPP period when their normal revenue streams were
| unavailable due to COVID restrictions (Tayisha Adams actually
| went into detail about how and why she used the loan in the
| linked article). Which was quite literally the point of the PPP
| loans.
|
| But I get that critical thinking is hard when you have an
| ideological point to make and you just want to shit talk other
| people.
|
| Guess what? A lot of tech companies also took out PPP loans.
| Former HC darling Mixpanel took PPP loans. As did Bird, and a
| number of dating apps. (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/06/ppp-
| loans-to-tech-start-ups-...) Are we calling them unscrupulous
| too?
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Yes, proof of impaired revenue or profit streams with a
| certain threshold should have been a requirement for PPP.
|
| Much lower income thresholds should have been applied to
| stimulus checks. Student loan debt should not have been
| paused for high earners. Interest rates should not have been
| pegged at 0 while asset bubbles formed over all asset
| classes.
|
| That's called rational and responsible policy.
|
| Enforcement could have been retroactive to avoid delaying
| disbursement of funds. It's not hard to write sensible
| legislation, even under a time crunch.
|
| And hardships come naturally to business all the time. It's
| not the government's role to save everybody in every
| situation. Companies that were financially irresponsible or
| poorly run should naturally fail when economic times get
| rough.
|
| The road to hell is paved with good intentions. We saved
| everybody just to end up with massive inflation which will
| require forcing the economy into recession anyway, defeating
| the entire purpose and impact of the stimulus.
|
| Make no mistake, unemployment will spike in a big way as the
| Fed tightens, just as it has essentially every other time
| they had to tighten to curb inflation.
|
| The aid was right, the magnitude was far overdone. It will be
| quite obvious to historians, though it's obvious even now.
| tanaros wrote:
| > That's called rational and responsible policy.
|
| While I wouldn't say that the policy as implemented was
| optimal, I think it's worth considering the conditions
| under which it was made.
|
| Each policy like this needs to balance the efficiency of
| the program with its coverage of those who need help. As an
| example, giving money to everyone unconditionally would
| have ensured full coverage, but it might not be very
| efficient. However, each restriction added to make the aid
| more targeted risks excluding people who genuinely needed
| help (reducing coverage) and _also_ increases costs since
| now the restriction needs to be tested, there needs to be
| an enforcement apparatus for those who violate it, etc.
| This is an uncertain calculus.
|
| Then there's the political reality that policy is not
| created by a benevolent dictator but instead through
| compromise among many individual parties, each of which has
| their own agenda and priorities, some of whom are acting in
| bad faith. Each decision point leads to more debate (should
| this group be in or out? should this threshold be X or Y?)
| and hassle, while in the background there are people
| suffering right now. After some point, you have to give up
| and accept the imperfections just to get it done.
|
| Finally, politics being what they are, no matter how
| effective, helpful, and efficient the program is, the
| government's reward for shipping the aid package is that
| the opposition party will decry it as wasteful and
| unnecessary. Every flaw will be amplified as part of their
| overall political messaging, and armchair analysts with the
| full benefit of hindsight will critique every decision. I
| can't imagine that provides great motivation to put a lot
| of effort into polishing and tweaking the policy into
| perfection.
|
| All of this is not to say that we shouldn't strive for
| better programs and government--we absolutely should--just
| that it is a tremendously difficult problem.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Wow. Just wow. No point in trying to have a conversation
| with someone who is just going to rotely reiterate
| ideological talking points.
|
| But I will say on one point ( _Companies that were
| financially irresponsible or poorly run should naturally
| fail when economic times get rough._ ) These companies ere
| struggling _because the government shut everything
| nonessential down._ The point of the PPP was to make up for
| that fact that _the government, during a global pandemic
| that killed millions_ wouldn 't let people go to work.
|
| Next time you want to discuss the merits of the PPP, step
| outside of your tech bubble and think about what COVID was
| like for all of the non-tech companies whose functions
| can't be done from home.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| What is ideological? Your responses indicates you have no
| understanding of nuance or magnitude in policy.
|
| Was it an all or nothing situation? No, not at all. So
| either you're being intentionally misleading, or lack
| critical thinking. The option in front of politicians
| wasn't do these bills in this exact form or nothing at
| all. Why act like it was? It's a false premise.
|
| Is it due to a bias in trying to justify the inflationary
| result?
|
| And you seem to lack understanding of the consequence of
| high inflation, which inevitably will be higher
| unemployment, hurting those you sought to help. Study any
| history of the relationship between monetary policy,
| inflation, and unemployment and it's pretty obvious.
| ausbah wrote:
| the covid bailouts were the only reason we didn't see massive
| economic collapse in the middle of the pandemic
| gumby wrote:
| Regardless of my opinion on Covid bailouts (too big, too
| small, too many, too few) all such interventions are
| squeezing a balloon: you shift the problem temporally.
|
| There's nothing wrong with doing that (people sensibly borrow
| to purchase and use assets all the time). And when people are
| in the middle of a crisis it's appropriate to take action
| (even in a drought the fire brigade sprays water on a fire).
|
| But it's worth looking retrospectively to figure out how much
| to do next time, not to be absolutist about it one way or the
| other.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| This is the low effort response every time. Where is the
| nuance in the thinking around magnitude and implementation of
| policy?
|
| It's not a black/white situation of choosing between economic
| collapse or hyperinflation at all. And keep in mind there
| were 3-4 huge packages passed. It's not like this had to be
| done as a single rushed magnum opus bill, this is the
| consequence of many bills and executive actions passed over 2
| years, coinciding with a Fed that had unilateral power to
| ease the brakes yet did nothing for 2 years.
| Spivak wrote:
| Well I mean our political climate is why it had to be
| passed in a huge bill. When every bill of any importance is
| passed with narrow margins and political capital is finite
| you're incentivized to have "big pushes" because you likely
| wont get another shot.
| colpabar wrote:
| > you likely wont get another shot
|
| I'm not really that familiar with legislative processes,
| but this seems ridiculous if it's true. Isn't it the job
| of the house to write bills? What else do they have to
| do? Why won't they get another shot?
|
| I think it's just a lack of political will. Not from
| regular people, but from politicians. People love to
| point to a huge 1000+ page bill that didn't pass because
| the guys voted it down and say "oh well we can't have X
| because the other guys voted against it". If "your guys"
| are really interested in having X, why don't they just
| write another bill that contains the minimum language to
| enact it?
|
| We should really reject these massive "omnibus" bills out
| of principle. No one even reads them! There's no reason
| we can't have simple, targeted legislation that is
| limited to exactly one topic.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| This is the correct answer.
|
| Perhaps its because I work on the backend side of businesses
| (specifically the tax part) and so I actually get to see the
| financial numbers, but I am aware of over ten thousand jobs
| in SoCal alone that were saved by the PPP bailout.
|
| It's disturbing to see the vaguely sociopath comments on this
| thread by tech workers who were largely unaffected by COVID
| complaining about "interfering" with the markets and about
| "bailouts."
|
| A lot of businesses were hit hard by COVID. For tens of
| thousands of businesses, the COVID PPP loans were the only
| source of revenue they had at a time when government
| restrictions (i.e., the lockdowns) were inhibiting their
| sources of revenue. (And guys, we were in a pandemic that
| killed millions worldwide. Even after the lockdowns ended,
| many people were scared to go out for months.)
|
| And even with the PPP loans, many small businesses didn't
| survive the lockdowns. Margins are _low_ in many industries.
| Not everything is tech where you can bumble along without
| profits or purpose for a decade surviving on fat VC money.
| kurupt213 wrote:
| Sure, but it didn't have to be the most wasteful
| implementation possible.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| thank you for taking the time to add this -- in the first
| six months of covid-19, there were some US gov'ies that
| took the small business story very seriously, and conducted
| direct, public surveys and published those numbers. The
| trends now, two years later, are still hidden from even
| intelligent people here at YNews, since the mainstream news
| won't print stories that refer to it, for fear of causing
| panics(?); and that ridiculous, cynical number called
| unemployment just floats along in the news every day.
|
| I have done some initial quantitative analysis on the raw
| survey responses, but not gone further, since you know,
| daily troubles. The small business situation is deeply
| changed in the last two years, and this is not over at all.
| walkhour wrote:
| Every policy in the last fifty years of the US government would
| be perfectly rational if its purpose was to destroy the nuclear
| and extended family. It may just be coincidence, but there's no
| doubt these are the consequences.
|
| These policies are in line with that, a unequivocal transfer of
| money from structured hard working families to unstructured
| broken ones. Removing incentives for the former and adding them
| for the latter.
|
| It's very easy to destroy social fabric top down, but it can
| only be created bottom up.
| escapedmoose wrote:
| > Every policy in the last fifty years of the US government
| would be perfectly rational if its purpose was to destroy the
| nuclear and extended family.
|
| How do you figure?
| vmception wrote:
| If only anything in the government was that coordinated.
| RhysU wrote:
| Suppose that it wasn't coordinated but rather emergent.
| Then less government would be the obvious answer.
|
| Notice less government is therefore the answer regardless
| of why we keep getting these outcomes.
| newbamboo wrote:
| "class of people so eager to take wealth/future prosperity from
| their children"
|
| Agreed. Very Ugolino.
| vmception wrote:
| The best time to get money is when everyone is scared that
| money wont matter.
| ourmandave wrote:
| There's been a lot of U.S. gov bailouts before covid.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/governmen...
|
| The next one looks like student loans which totals $1.61T
| nation wide.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| 2008 bailout didn't even come close to the size of the Covid
| one. And there were far fewer "helicopter" dollars, no
| eviction moratorium, foreclosure moratorium, student debt
| forbearance. And the economy was much worse back then, with
| many high profile bankruptcies and slow gains in employment
|
| The initial Covid packages were warranted, but the packages
| passed in December 2020 and March 2021 were largely
| unnecessary after the initial shock had passed and the
| velocity in the drop in unemployment was already strong. Or
| they may have been warranted at a much smaller magnitude with
| more discretion in who received benefits.
|
| The consequence now is that the economy is so overstimulated,
| we basically have to force the recession we would have had
| anyway to prevent it from overheating. So we'll end up in the
| same place, but with a ton of extra debt to service
| Zircom wrote:
| I'm all for the student loan bailout, at least this one is
| going directly to the pockets of consumers instead of having
| to trickle down like the PPP loans or previous corporate
| bailouts.
| lend000 wrote:
| Student loan holders already received 2 years of paused
| payments and an effective 20%+ reduction in debt due to
| inflation over that period.
|
| There is a lot wrong with our education system (including
| guaranteed infinite loans incentivizing high tuition prices
| -- a better system would be to just have some state schools
| be free, and like in Europe, more competitive. They would
| only be for people who really need them financially and
| have great potential academically). However, resetting
| student loans and letting the system continue is definitely
| NOT the solution.
| MauroIksem wrote:
| Most people didn't get a 20% raise during that time, so
| stating that debt reduction by 20% is a mute point.
| MauroIksem wrote:
| So why not both? Reset loans and don't let the current
| system continue? Your argument is a weird one. It
| literally hurts no one to forgive the loans but a lot of
| people don't want to see and i think that's because those
| people who don't have student loans feel like they're
| losing an advantage.
| lend000 wrote:
| Because no one is talking about doing both -- the only
| policy being discussed by populists is the simplistic
| option (cancel loans or don't cancel loans). Also, all of
| those loans (and I have a fair amount as well) were taken
| voluntarily by adults capable of handling responsibility
| and consequences. If there was any fair way to do it, it
| would be to reimburse the last X years worth of student
| loan payments, such that people who forewent savings to
| pay down their debts aren't penalized compared to people
| who did not.
|
| > It literally hurts no one to forgive the loans
|
| Also want to address this, because I feel like it's a
| common misconception, especially with Gen Z. It's
| basically an inflationary policy to forgive debts. So it
| does hurt anyone who is affected negatively by inflation,
| while certainly not being "fair" for the reason mentioned
| above (some responsible adults actually paid their debts
| and are penalized for that). We all make mistakes (such
| as taking out massive loans to go to acting school and
| having it not materialize), but consequences are the side
| effect of living in a consistent reality. If you make
| financial reality inconsistent by forgiving loans, you
| incentivize more of that bad behavior. Also note that
| most degree holders with student debt are not the lower
| class, but the middle and upper middle class. Student
| loan forgiveness is a handout for an educated class of
| people who are generally doing much better than the
| poorest in society.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Every time the government gets involved markets get distorted
| and we pay the price down the road. Guaranteed home loans
| from the govt with almost no down payment caused lenders to
| not check credit and then we had 2008. Very similar situation
| with government education loan guarantees. And then
| legislators pretend to fix the problem with bailouts but we
| all pay with an inflation tax. Its robbery from savers to
| what should be risky borrowers. On top of that we now have
| these bloated education institutions that offer bs degrees
| and wacky educators because of the artificial propped up
| market that is detached from economics and value.
| digisign wrote:
| This is true and shouldn't be downvoted. Only quibble is
| the alarmist tone, however the situation is and should be
| somewhat alarming. Folks often recommend putting out the
| fire with gasoline, unfortunately.
|
| For example another poster recommends free or low-price
| state schools, instead of handing out mountains of freshly
| created money. One of those is incredibly inflationary, the
| other is not.
| [deleted]
| gumby wrote:
| I don't think a 100% bailout is under discussion; the most
| likely scenario is $10K relief which will zero the balances
| of 30% of student debt holders and cost $37B.
|
| Since most of that 30% have low income and come from low
| income backgrounds it will be a struggle to get it passed. A
| shame as those are the ones that need it the most. It's
| interesting to note that Social Security was designed to
| cover 100% of the population even though only a smaller
| segment needed it, specifically to make it harder to kill.
| For student debt that would be an impossible sum and
| unnecessary.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| You hit the nail on the head when you mentioned Social
| Security-- that's where the rescue efforts need to be
| concentrated.
|
| Student debt problems are entirely self-inflicted. Students
| taking the loans made their own decisions. Social Security
| users have been _paying_ for decades (not taking, as the
| student loan recipients were). Social Security users,
| especially those who have not yet started collecting, have
| worked decades to get their benefits back.
|
| If students get their loans paid off before Social Security
| is fixed, it's a certain sign of corruption. (Votes for
| money.)
|
| Use your votes to make government effective. Vote for
| politicians that pledge to fix Social Security.
| areyousure wrote:
| > It's interesting to note that Social Security was
| designed to cover 100% of the population even though only a
| smaller segment needed it, specifically to make it harder
| to kill.
|
| In case anyone is curious, please note the following
| excerpt from
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Act
|
| > Job categories that were not covered by the act included
| workers in agricultural labor, domestic service, government
| employees, and many teachers, nurses, hospital employees,
| librarians, and social workers. As a result,
|
| > > 65 percent of the African American workforce was
| excluded from the initial Social Security program (as well
| as 27 percent of white workers). Many of these workers were
| covered only later on, when Social Security was expanded in
| 1950 and then in 1954.
| usrn wrote:
| Chances are they don't have children.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Beyond your own children, lawmakers should care about making
| policy that benefits the future of society. Perhaps too
| altruistic for some.
|
| But now that inflation is here and consumer sentiment is
| close to all time lows, the jig is up.
| fareesh wrote:
| There are also services that sell .edu domains to avail discounts
| on various web products.
| gumby wrote:
| Murphy's law says whoever ends up trying to screen these out will
| not have read https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-
| programmers-... and thus will unwittingly screen out plenty of
| legitimate students as well.
|
| From the cases described in the article: Some people actually do
| have a given name as their family name and some even have the
| same name for both (I know a Peter Peter). Also some people only
| have a single name (consider the famous IBM Fellow Mohan, who
| types "C Mohan" when some system can't deal with that case.
|
| Straightening this out will be tedious and costly. I feel bad for
| the actual students who were unable to register.
| areyousure wrote:
| In case anyone is curious:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Mohan
| wildrhythms wrote:
| Can someone please explain in detail how the fraud works? The
| article doesn't fully explain how the is money distributed to the
| fraudsters.
|
| With FAFSA, the assistance is all encapsulated away from the
| student- you apply for an assistance loan (requires SSN), an
| account is created for you, the college is hooked up directly to
| that account, so you never actually handle the cash. How does
| this specific fraud actually work?
| indymike wrote:
| There is funding other than FAFSA related grants, scholarships
| and aid, for instance, state budget allocations based on
| student enrollment.
| Siira wrote:
| One obvious loophole is that there a lot of people (SSNs) who
| haven't gone to a college already, so the college can just sign
| up people and get subsidies without those "students" ever
| showing up. They can pay these students, or possibly fake their
| documentation.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| COVID brought a rush of emergency aid programs that weren't
| very well thought out. In this case, the aid targeted at
| students likely came through the HEERF, or Higher Education
| Emergency Relief Funds. Some of the programs are listed here:
| https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/crrsaa.html
|
| The reason these are ripe for fraud is that in many cases they
| were implemented as direct deposit transfers directly to
| registered students. They were implemented without checks or
| controls in order to get the money out ASAP, so anyone who
| registered as a student and entered the correct information to
| qualify could get one of those direct deposits.
|
| As far as I can tell, some of the implementation details
| depended on the college. Scammers likely tried different
| colleges until they discovered a system that didn't verify
| anything (California Junior College System) and then started
| filling out forms to collect the direct deposits.
|
| The fact that scammers are registering with obviously fake
| names like "Barack Obama" suggests that zero confirmations are
| being performed at all before this money is distributed.
| rapind wrote:
| This is another example of why aid programs should be
| universal. Send every citizen a cheque for the same amount,
| and I mean everyone (even Bezos and Musk). One system built
| competently. Way lower risk of fraud or corruption
| (qualifiers exacerbate fraud, gatekeepers policing qualifiers
| create corruption).
|
| It's not like Bezos will cash this cheque.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| +1 Million on this!
|
| Our efforts to avoid accidentally helping a rich person via
| means testing cause for more damage to our ability to help
| poor and middle class people.
|
| Just give everybody the same amount of cash and leave it at
| that! There are few enough rich people (almost by
| definition) that it won't save much to exclude them.
| clort wrote:
| You'd better believe he would certainly cash every cheque
| that comes his way. He once claimed $4000 tax credit for
| his children even when he wasn't entitled to, see
| https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-claimed-tax-
| credi...
|
| Of course he won't be doing anything so mundane personally,
| people like him will have teams whose job it is to squeeze
| every cent.
| hervature wrote:
| > he wasn't entitled to
|
| He actually was entitled to it. His earnings in 2011 were
| below $100,000. I'm all for keeping people honest, but
| let's not lie.
| clort wrote:
| Ooh, his "earnings"
|
| See, in 2010 he was worth $12.6 billion. In 2011 it was
| $18.1 billion. Then in 2012 went up to $23.2 billion.
| These figures apparently come from Forbes, who calculate
| this stuff.. see
| https://www.therichest.com/lifestyles/jeff-bezo-years-
| earned...
|
| I guess he didn't "earn" that money though.. so would
| definitely have been entitled to a benefit for folk who
| don't earn so much? My bad...
| Spivak wrote:
| Look, I'm all down for a wealth tax but under our current
| system this doesn't count for anything. If my house
| doubles in value from $200k to $400k I didn't make $200k
| in income in the eyes of the tax man.
|
| The fact that the criteria for the payout was just income
| and not a combination of income and assets is the fault
| of the people writing the legislation.
| FpUser wrote:
| If they have any sense they'd just donate it back.
| omegalulw wrote:
| This doesn't well thought out either. What if you need to
| send larger amounts of money? Sending out money to everyone
| works when it's a reasonably small amount.
| ec109685 wrote:
| This article has confirmation that colleges did in fact get
| scammed: https://edsource.org/2021/at-these-california-
| community-coll...
|
| Thanks for providing the additional details.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> obviously fake names like "Barack Obama"
|
| That doesn't strike me as fake. I've met Osama Bin Laden, at
| least _one_ of the many people in this world with that name.
| There are no doubt many people called Gene Simmons who might
| have issues setting up accounts. James Bond was named after
| an author of bird books. I bet his descendants still get
| laughs at school. I met a junior officer once, last name
| "Planet". Good luck keeping a straight face on parade as they
| get promoted to Captain.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I had a coworker who was taking a cab back to the office.
| The cabbie asked for the address: 123 Main St. He thought
| it was fake, but not quite 123 Fake St fake.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| From the article, the fake names are not even remotely
| plausible: whole batches of students with "NA" as middle
| initial, sequential registration numbers, long compound
| words, and other obvious fakery.
| projektfu wrote:
| One wonders if, Major Major style, Captain Planet will be
| permitted to advance to Major.
| [deleted]
| aaron695 wrote:
| This article is mixing multiple frauds.
|
| Mostly it's people getting free .edu email address which allows
| discounts on software and other things. This is most of the 65K
| fake students.
|
| Then there's the fraud, where students are paying people $ to
| take their classes to get the government $$$$ -
|
| "However, Rich soon realized that all of the work being
| submitted by four students was clearly being completed by an
| individual who wasn't a student in the class."
| https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/california-co...
|
| This might be why middle names are missing. That data is
| unknown but the other data real.
|
| I suspect they are wrong about the third type of external
| fraud, but not sure.
|
| Then there's the fraud where the College gets benefits from
| student numbers so allows the spam.
| sshine wrote:
| > Then there's the fraud where the College gets benefits from
| student numbers so allows the spam.
|
| This is how one section of the Danish educational system
| worked for years: Pointless, governmentally funded study
| programmes that don't qualify for any kind of real-world
| work, but the school gets a yearly reward per student, and
| the students get a monthly deposit for being a student.
| sjburt wrote:
| Typically you get a small amount, somewhere in the order of
| $500 per term, refunded directly to you for personal expenses,
| textbooks, etc. I think certain students may qualify for more.
| YATA2 wrote:
| ineedasername wrote:
| Federal aid requires attendance verification for each course a
| student takes. In my state, state-level aid adopted the same
| requirement. Why the heck does the California system do this too?
|
| Not to mention that even getting the aid in the first place
| requires filling out a FAFSA form-- difficult to provide fake tax
| returns-- and about 10% are randomly selected for verification as
| well.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Maybe a quick temporary fix would be to add a reCAPTCHA, and a
| better fix would be to mandate appearing on campus and verifying
| your identity before any accounts or financial aid is made
| available?
| matt-attack wrote:
| Yes. Let's solve a $1B tax fraud using captcha.
| xbar wrote:
| Captcha is effective at stopping a lot more fraud than $1B
| worth.
|
| Is it perfectly effective? No, but it stops a massive chunk
| of otherwise easy-to-execute fraud.
| tomascalletce wrote:
| If you do that you run the risk of lowering your enrolment
| numbers and losing government funding for your institution. The
| problem is not tech related it is an incentives problem.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Such is standard operating procedure on any campus where
| students receive federal funding.
|
| Phantom students are not common at all - anything with a name
| like "Open the Books" sounds like a lobby group, and one would
| like about their motives and funding sources.
| [deleted]
| Proven wrote:
| fortran77 wrote:
| But the colleges get "free money," too, for every fake student.
| So nobody wants to stop it.
|
| > But Rich believes that these colleges do fear enrollment
| drops if they remove the fake accounts.
|
| > At her college, the institution is considered a medium
| college -- more than 10,000 students but less than 20,000 --
| but if it loses students, it will be considered a small college
| -- less than 10,000 students -- and lose funding down the road,
| the interim VP of academic affairs recently told instructors
| and administrators.
|
| We need to change the laws to give any taxpayer standing to sue
| when they see taxpayer money being misappropriated.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| In Australia it not that uncommon for the government to fund
| legal challenges via grants to it's own laws or to areas of
| unchallenged law to create rulings. But what you're
| describing almost seems like you need a anti corruption body
| that's publicly funded to sue for the best outcome of policy.
| Giving individuals standing would make it possible but
| cripplingly expensive to pursue.
| whatusername wrote:
| Have you got some specific Australian examples of that? I
| feel like I should know one or two - but nothing is coming
| to mind.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| I was thinking about Family law court (federal in
| australia), in cases where it's complex migration and
| custody matters and some of the scenarios haven't really
| been seen before but may be considered on paper.
| kwatsonafter wrote:
| I don't mean to insult your intelligence but, "changing the
| laws to give any..." could be just as easily achieved by we
| common citizens choosing to fund the IRS.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I can't choose not to fund the IRS without risking spending
| time in prison.
| seoaeu wrote:
| > We need to change the laws to give any taxpayer standing to
| sue when they see taxpayer money being misappropriated.
|
| If you did that, then any government aid program would spend
| all their time and money fending off frivolous lawsuits
| instead of providing aid to those who need it. Though maybe
| that's the intended outcome
| newbamboo wrote:
| Exactly the same incentives problem with EDD. The more fraud,
| the larger their budget gets and so there is only one metric
| they care about; increasing the total number of recipients.
| Similar issue with fake user counts in the tech world. User
| count = money.
|
| Unfortunately the dominant party also benefits from all of
| this fraud, so it is ultimately a political problem. Until
| there is viable outside political competition, there will
| continue to be zero accountability and wide scale fraud and
| corruption. User count = money = political power/voters.
| Mainstream candidates are owned, and so the only solution
| involves draining the swamp so to speak and it's pretty clear
| at this point, the swamp usually wins.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| And whitelists and blacklists and IP addresses.
| grumple wrote:
| This is such an easy problem to solve. There are simple technical
| tools to prevent bots from enrolling. More advanced detection
| methods will catch basically all of the rest. And then you can
| and should be contacting prospective students via phone or
| otherwise to verify enrollment. And require physical presence and
| ID (as my university did) before distributing aid.
|
| Just an example of truly inept leadership in multiple departments
| and at the top.
| orware wrote:
| It's interesting to see this thread crop up here, as I've only
| recently left CCC system for a job in tech after being in IT
| within the system for about 14 years.
|
| This particular issue over the last year or so has gotten worse,
| with more eyeballs on it, once actual money became involved
| (before it was still an issue but on a smaller scale mostly for
| the free edu emails we tend to issue, along with other freebies
| that can help enable, such as free credits for Azure or other
| services).
|
| Even in the previous cases, I was annoyed/upset because in my
| mind the first line of defense the colleges have is preventing
| these fake users from being able to submit an application
| successfully in the first place, since the OpenCCCApply
| application (which I believe is used by all ~115 CCCs) was
| allowing the submissions in the first place...and since we mostly
| bring that application data into the individual colleges, not
| many triggered a "hold" on our end.
|
| Yes, CCCTechCenter (which helps manage the team which maintains
| the OpenCCCApply system) have done a few things over this past
| year that are mentioned in the article already (but based on the
| article I can't tell 100% if it is really indicating the issue is
| still rampant in the more recent semesters...one of the changes
| was adding usage of an IP reputation checker in for example, but
| there are likely ways around that too for these folks who
| actually don't seem to actually use bots...maybe they use actual
| people instead based on what I've seen, such as the YouTube video
| shared in the article).
|
| What I found really annoying by it all is that while the problem
| originated from the systems being provided to the colleges from
| the state level (OpenCCCApply mainly), the individual colleges
| are now on the hook to gather a bunch of mostly useless data, and
| go on silly adventures such as investigating IP address info
| within our other systems (like Canvas) to help find or report the
| fraudulent activity.
|
| I think I saw FAFSA mentioned a few times but I don't think there
| is a ton of fraud coming from the FAFSA application too
| directly...but in this past year many of the colleges have been
| putting COVID relief funds they've received (to help get
| students/staff back on campus) and using those to pay for fees or
| provide an extra amount for books, etc. which isn't something
| that will continue forever (in fact, I think for this summer this
| will already have ended, or it will be the last semester where it
| will be offered).
|
| In most cases, once the incentive is taken away, or the bar to
| get it is made higher, these folks creating the fraudulent
| accounts will generally move on (or target schools that don't
| implement some of the 2nd layer fixes at the college
| level...unfortunately while the CCCTechCenter tries its best, it
| doesn't typically fully acknowledge its role in creating some of
| these situations, and I almost lol'ed when I saw towards the end
| of the article I saw they are looking to get more funding to
| "modernize" it, yet again, considering a lot of effort / time /
| money already has gone into creating the current OpenCCCApply
| system not that long ago from the previous system, which was
| pretty bad in comparison).
|
| Overall though this particular situation is at the same both more
| complex and simpler than folks may think, once you have some more
| details (more complex because there is a lot about what's going
| on in the CCCs the HN community isn't aware of, along with super
| strict regulations that have to be followed within the individual
| Financial Aid departments at each school, otherwise they win not
| be able to provide federal aid monies to students if they weren't
| doing so, making that avenue for fraud a lot more less likely
| than the scenario I shared above on how the COVID relief monies
| have been being used instead to provide an incentive to get
| students back in the classroom...along with the solution being
| simpler since we already have a central application process that
| should be the system that keeps these applications from ever
| reaching the individual colleges, but it fails in that
| regard...that along with removing the financial incentive
| currently present, should reduce the fraud levels
| considerably...although there are likely a few more complexities
| even I am unaware of...I would just appreciate it if the search
| for fraud wouldn't get pushed onto the individual colleges in
| these situations where a system wide protection should have
| prevented the situations in the first place, mainly because it
| causes a ton on unneeded busy work at the colleges keeping IT
| System Analysts and other technical folks from focusing on other,
| probably more important, internal projects).
|
| Excuse any typos...I wrote this small novel on my phone.
| orware wrote:
| Another note...based on what I know, most colleges are
| suffering from low enrollment too, and even though funding
| isn't solely based on the the student count on census date
| anymore (which is usually about 1-2 weeks into a semester...and
| faculty is supposed to drop students that don't come on the
| first day of class typically)...since now the formula is more
| complex with "success" related factors added (numbers of
| degrees / certificates awarded plus some other ones I don't
| directly recall right now.
|
| This leads to number of students still being a pretty big
| factor in the funding received for the year. From
| Administrators I would say if any are worth their salt,
| ignoring any sort of fraud would be a no-no so I'm hoping
| that's not a common situation being observed. On the other
| hand, losing a substantial percentage of your current budget
| due to a loss of students can be pretty tragic for the staff
| working on the campus. Budget reserves can usually be dipped
| into for a period of time, but what most folks don't know or
| realize is that compared to private businesses where the cost
| of employees may be only a fraction of what the business brings
| in profit, most CCCs are likely spending 80-90% of their
| budgets on salaries and benefits for their staff (in some cases
| the % may be more, in some cases it may be less). This makes it
| extremely difficult most of the time to weather a big loss in
| students because if budget reserves get expended, and student
| numbers don't improve, that'll mean some sort of layoff
| process...which also provides those employees with
| reinstatement rights too for a considerable period of time
| afterward).
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Whenever the topics of benefits fraud or means testing come up,
| there's always a lot of commentary from people who say it's more
| important to deliver aid freely and quickly than to ensure that
| it's going to the right people.
|
| Yet this is a perfect example of why that doesn't work in
| practice. Fraudsters are drawn to systems without sufficient
| controls and they will exploit them mercilessly as long as they
| think they can get away with it.
|
| Worse, aid is infinite and resources are limited. These fake
| students are blocking actual students from registering for
| classes and draining away the time of educators and
| administrators who should be busy running the school, not trying
| to separate out real and fake students.
|
| Means testing is a dumb idea if we're administering, for example,
| a $100 drug test before giving someone $100 in food stamps.
| However, when we're handing out $5,000 or more then investing
| $100-$200 into means testing or manual verification should have
| been an obvious requirement.
|
| EDIT: People seem to be misinterpreting this article. The aid in
| question came from the COVID-19 related HEERF funds and CARES act
| and _was distributed directly to applicants_. It did not count
| towards nor subtract from normal financial aid (FAFSA, etc.)
| meant to pay for the education. It was supposed to be money meant
| to help students survive _outside of education_ in a faltering
| COVID economy. Financial aid for actual education would have gone
| straight to the school and therefore there 's no reason for
| fraudsters to register to consume it.
|
| This is money distributed to students (or fraudsters) via direct
| deposit. It's different than the aid you're familiar with from
| past college application experience.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| It's not that the aid is 'going to the wrong people', it's the
| fact that financial aid needs to exist in the first place.
| Setting that aside, I don't really understand how this fraud
| happens- when I applied for FAFSA, the student loan account was
| created for me, the assistance applied through some automated
| system, which was hooked up directly to the college. I never
| saw the cash at all. The article doesn't explain how the fraud
| works either.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > It's not that the aid is 'going to the wrong people',
|
| In this case, it literally is going to the wrong people.
| These funds were designed to give students an extra financial
| boost during a faltering COVID economy (that didn't really
| happen) and the funds weren't infinite.
|
| If fraudsters are showing up and claiming the money before
| actual students in need can get it, I don't understand how
| you think it's not a case of the aid going to the wrong
| people.
|
| Again, this _isn 't tuition aid_ and it's _not related to the
| cost of college_. It was a stimulus /aid package targeted at
| people who were also students, but it was separate from
| tuition assistance or tuition financial aid.
|
| > I don't really understand how this fraud happens- when I
| applied for FAFSA
|
| Lawmakers rushed through a lot of new COVID-19 related aid
| bills and aid packages. Many of them were poorly thought out
| and implemented as quickly as possible, forgoing controls and
| verification to get them done ASAP.
|
| The article specifically mentions COVID-19 related aid, which
| has been rife with fraud. It's frustrating that some of these
| supposedly time-limited emergency aid packages continue to be
| handed out despite the booming economy and rampant inflation.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Some of the programs are rife with fraud by accident, some
| (many?) are rife with fraud by design. In my state the
| contracting system to do things like build roads is rated
| the most corrupt in the country. Does anyone imagine that's
| an accident? The PPP gave out "forgivable" loans to small
| businesses. It was sold as helping businesses that closed
| down. I know multiple small businesses that never shut
| down, had their best year ever during the pandemic, and
| also took home a few hundred thousand dollars extra from
| the PPP. The general public would consider this fraud, even
| though technically it's all by the books, broken by design.
| newsclues wrote:
| Agreed Canada has similar Covid benefits that have been
| thoroughly scammed.
|
| I can't believe it was a mistake, especially when you
| have government bureaucrats who are doing the scam
| themselves for millions...
|
| https://globalnews.ca/news/7600626/ontario-civil-servant-
| bet...
| jeffbee wrote:
| Seems like you got it backwards. In this case the fraud is
| enabled by the means test. If the education was simply free or
| affordable to anyone and funded from tax revenues, this fraud
| would not be possible. The highest level of fraud possible in
| that system would be that someone gets an education they did
| not truly need, which is hardly bad at all.
| peyton wrote:
| You're saying when the government pays, there can't be fraud?
| I'm not sure that's correct, historically speaking.
| jeffbee wrote:
| How would you scam a free community college?
| supportlocal4h wrote:
| It doesn't take much imagination. "Free" doesn't mean
| there isn't a lot of money swirling around.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Spell it out for me. Exactly how would you scam a free
| community college?
| digisign wrote:
| Usually done by giving an inflated contract for services
| of some sort, to an associate. Associate often returns a
| kickback to the giver. As a campus needs a large
| maintanance budget, this can be a big source of fraud.
|
| However, I agree that low-cost state run colleges are a
| better strategy than free loans.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| We should simply make those who support things be personally
| financially liable for the costs and waste. It's easy to be
| flippant about waste when it's other people's money you're
| wasting.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Willingness to play fast and loose with other people's money
| in all contexts is a big problem for western society right
| now. You see it in both public and private sector.
| supportlocal4h wrote:
| "Western" meaning west of where the sun rises?
| msla wrote:
| That sounds like a free rider problem: No, I don't "support"
| the bike paths, so I don't pay for their upkeep, but I live
| in a better city for their existence, even if I don't even
| own a bike.
|
| Similarly, I don't "support" the hospitals, right up until I
| get cancer and spend over a month in-patient receiving some
| very expensive therapies.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| It's pretty rich for someone to talk of a freeloading
| problem while advocating for bike lanes that are utilized
| by only very few, while paid for by everyone else, whether
| they will ever set foot on the bike path or not.
|
| And I say that as a cyclist, but one that can see past the
| self-serving rationalization and manipulative nature of the
| freeloader argument.
|
| And that doesn't even address the deeply authoritarian and
| evil core of the argument of "well, I determine what's best
| for you so I will force it on you against your will for
| your own good, because what I want/enjoy conveniently
| coincides with what is best for you". It's tyranny and a
| purely evil mindset.
| arebop wrote:
| What's the incentive for the fraudster in this? The article
| doesn't really say, but it does link to one example YouTuber
| who demonstrates this fraud; he says this is a great way to get
| a free email account. You seem to suggest this is more about
| $5000+ than an email account; is the financial aid sent to
| students rather than the bursar's office?
| xeromal wrote:
| The commentor edited with more details:
|
| > The aid in question came from the COVID-19 related HEERF
| funds and CARES act and was distributed directly to
| applicants.
| donthellbanme wrote:
| Don't worry Means testing is in full swing today for all
| government programs.
|
| We are back to making qualifying for aid, welfare, etc.
| difficult so people who need it give up.
|
| They got lax during Covid, but not today.
|
| The historical point of Means Testing is to dissuade the people
| whom need it most from applying. Every Social Worker can go on
| for hours how the powers at be make qualifying for any help
| arduous.
|
| It's never discussed publically, because outright fraud is
| easier to report on, and the average Joe has never dealt with
| the welfare system, except maybe in college.
|
| I had to lie about living independent in order to qualify for
| anything other than a Pell grant, and a small federal loan. SOL
| is up, and I paid my later student loans off completely.
| Sniffnoy wrote:
| Benefits fraud and means testing are two separate concerns.
| Whether verification is performed is independent of whether the
| aid is restricted based on one's means. Verification needs to
| be performed, you're certainly correct about that, that much is
| clear; but that's a separate issue from means testing.
| newbamboo wrote:
| Not really no.
| [deleted]
| maxerickson wrote:
| The amount disbursed fraudulently and the percentage that
| represents of the total would be a lot more interesting than
| the number of fake accounts someone observed.
|
| I clicked through to the LA Times article and it mentions at
| least hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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