Scammers Robbing Community Colleges Blind

aren't so great there. Not everything is hunky dory, And it's sort of leading to questions about the so called expertise of the experts, of the sort of technocratic class that democrats love and have embraced and embody, and the kinds of the ways in which they have decided to govern. This has impacted a lot of things. Well, let's go from things like housing and all kinds of stuff like that.

There are so many areas of classically bad liberal governance California environmental law, the high speed rail system, all kinds of bad things. I want to go to. Community colleges not often the butt end of our jokes and critiques of California's inept system of governance. And yet this story is so bad it's hilarious. It's about scammers stealing millions of dollars from California's community colleges. This is from a piece in cal Matters calmatters dot org, written by Adam Ecklman.

For years, scammers have targeted community colleges across the state, posing as students in order to steal money from scholarships or government financial aid. Recent state reports suggest that the problem is getting worse, and college leaders say they're worried that the Trump administration's cuts to the US Department of Education could hamper fraud prevention and investigations. So, of course the media the article tries to paint this as a

Trump administration problem. But let's let us continue, shall we. In twenty twenty one height of COVID, the California Community College's Chancellor's office reported that about twenty percent of college applicants were likely fake, So a fifth of all people applying for the community colleges were not real human beings. In January of twenty twenty four, just a year ago, fifteen months ago, the state said it was about twenty five percent. Now, just a year later, the number is

thirty four percent. So fully a third of everybody applying for community college in California is not a real person, is a fraudster, and it's probably more than that. Those are all the ones that are getting stopped, said John Hetz, the Executive Vice Chancellor for the Data Team at the Chancellor's office. The scammers that aren't stopped have stolen millions

in taxpayer dollars. Calmetters reported that these fake students receive more than five million dollars from the federal government and nearly one point five million dollars from the state, according to anonymized reports that colleges submitted to the state from September twenty twenty one through December twenty twenty three. Faculties say they're exasperated from working as detectives trying to suss

out which students surreal. They say scammers are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence to infiltrate classes, using tools like chat GPT to pose as students. Students say these fraudsters are taking coveted seats and preventing them from enrolling in classes they need to graduate. In the last twelve months, colleges have reported giving away giving more than ten million dollars in federal dollars to fake students, so just in the

last twelve months. In the last year, colleges have reported that they've given ten million dollars to fake students. That's the federal money and three million dollars in state money, so thirteen million dollars just in the last year. Data from the first few months of twenty twenty five show that colleges have already given away more than three million in federal aid and over seven hundred thousand in state dollars. So we're on track for about twelve million dollars, about

almost fifteen million dollars for this year. The scope of fraud is relatively small, said Chris Ferguson. I don't know if the amount of fraud is relatively small. I don't know. It's fifteen million more dollars than I have, said Chris Ferguson, a finance executive at the Chancellor's office, especially when compared to the roughly one point seven billion dollars in federal aid and one point five billion dollars in state aid

to California's community college students last year. He also said it's likely that colleges have improved their ability to detect fraud over time, potentially inflating the reporting numbers. Why would that inflate the reporting numbers if they are getting better at detecting fraud, I mean wouldn't just mean that their

numbers before were inadequate anyway. State lawmakers of allocation did roughly one hundred and fifty million dollars towards cybersecurity in twenty twenty two, and the Chancellor's office has brought in numerous tech companies, including id dot me and to n in Lexus Nexus to help authenticate students. Here's a way, Why don't you have the student show up with an ID to talk to a human being at this community call. Oh wait, I forgot. We're still trying to do this.

Pretend you know, kobuki theater, silliness of being concerned about in person classes and blah blah blah blah blah. Anyway, we're bringing in all these tech companies to help authenticate students. But Hets said none of these interventions will ever completely eliminate fraud, because each time the state gets better at fighting fraud, the bad actors adapt the tech equivalent to the red queen hypothesis. Not sure what that is. College leaders also rely on the Federal Education Department to help

find scammers. The department is broadly responsible for administering federal financial aid and for preventing and investigating related fraud. The office that administers federal aid has lost about half of its staff through layoffs, voluntary buyouts, and retirements. California Attorney General Rob Bonte recently joined other Democratic Attorneys general ensuing the Trump administration over these cuts, alleging they violate the constitution.

Although not technically part of the lawsuit or the layoffs. The Education Department's Office of Inspector General, which is responsible for fraud detection, so the state employees who are supposed to look into fraud, none of them have been touched here. Some of the Federal Department of Education fraud detection people

have been laid off or have resigned. Since October first, the Office of Inspector General has lost more than twenty percent of its staff, said Catherine Grant, a spokesperson for the office, including experienced auditors and investigators. As as for how these staffing changes affect the Office of Inspector General's ability to investigate student aid fraud in California, we are

committed to fighting student aid fraud wherever. That's not an answer as to how these staffing changes will affect their ability to investigate, And then they don't say how we are limited with what we can do based on our limited resources, so basically, and then it goes on to tell the story about how at Berkeley City College, how students were able to get around get around it, and how professors one professor was saying a librarian, Heather Dodge,

who works at Berkeley City College. It writes about her to connect with students and make the classes 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 quote 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. As long as the teacher drops a student within a certain timeframe, in this case, the first week, their enrollment in that class is void and the student can't seek financial aid for that course. After the first week, however, it's harder to remove them. This semester, she said, she

started with thirty five students within the first week. She kicked out a few students who didn't submit a video before students found a work around sending her a written response instead. The text was generic, she said, like something chat GPT would write, but she wasn't willing to drop them from the course. Are these students who are having technological challenges? Maybe they didn't have a webcam, maybe they didn't understand the assign again, have them show up to

the college. Stop doing all this remote crap. COVID's done. Stop pretending otherwise. It was really hard to suss out what was going on with it. It's not that hard to say, I'm not blaming this one, you know, teacher at Berkeley City College. It's easy to fix this, Dodge said. She's also worried about how it looks to drop so many students in a class. Well, yeah, and this shouldn't

be on her. Community college's funding is largely pegged to enrollment, and the Peralta community college district where Dodge teaches is suffering from enrollment to clients and faces major financial losses if they see I'm running a class it starts with thirty five students and ends with fifteen. That looks terrible. But yeah, of course it looks tir I feel bad for she shouldn't have to be that the individual community

college teachers shouldn't be the ones doing this. The administration should be smart enough to realize, hey, like a third of everyone applying is a scammer. More than that are probably getting through. Have some requirement that someone show up to something like this isn't hard and the idea all we got to blame the Trump administration for not helping detect front. No, you can manage this on your own. There are low tech solutions to this. The bots impersonate

homeless students and former foster youth. By statute, California's community colleges are required to accept any legitimate student, and state leaders have spent decades to trying to make it easier for students to enroll. Community college districts must sign an affidavit swearing the veracity of their information, but otherwise many colleges don't independently verify a student's address or identity. Why the heck not? We serve a large proportion of students

who may not have documentation for a variety of reasons. No, okay, if you're talking about genuinely homeless students, all right, but it is not a large proportion of your students who cannot provide you with any kind of documentation of that you live somewhere or that you're a real human being. Everyone's got a social Security card, everyone's got a driver's license.

We have a large proportion of students who may not have documentation for a variety of reasons, SI heads, such as students who are homeless, those who are undocumented, and those who are leaving the foster care system or don't have a relationship with their parents.

and how credentialed they are. And when you just scratch this veneer of competence, you pretty quickly find out these are not very competent people. These aren't like the smartest people in the world. They're just as dopey as anybody else, and they're getting But the problem is, I mean, this is far from the biggest scam that has robbed taxpayers

in California. I don't know how many of you guys remember like the number of people who are just absolutely bilking the state, the state through its unemployment agency, and how we were losing like billions of dollars in unemployment benefits that we're just going out to total scammers, including this one rapper who literally did a rap song about scamming the state of California out of the Employment Development Division, the EDD scamming EDD out of money like it's unbelievable.

But then sort of the helpless attitude of this article where we try to be so lenient with homeless students, which I just cannot imagine. There are that many homeless students whose identity you cannot verify through any other means. You can't use a Social Security card, you can't find a birth certificate, you can't on record, you can't find any other way to verify that someone's a real human being.

And beyond that the community colleges they're getting skilled. When we return, we'll talk about ways community colleges are getting scamed left, right and centered. They're getting scammed with wildfire relief, all kinds of stuff. That is next on the Johntsarardy Show, a big story about how fully a third of every every one applying for community college in California is a scammer,

and actually it might be more than that. Many people being admitted to community colleges in California and participating in remote classes is a scammer, and the state is befuddled, bewildered, and woe is me trying to find a way to how can we stop online scammers who are applying for community college and trying to get state in federal financial aid and bilking the state out of millions and the

helplessness that is on display. So here, the problem is you have bots run by scammers applying for community college, signing up for classes, and if they're in a class for more than like a week, and I guess this must be all remote learning classes. If they're in a class for more than a week and don't get dropped within that week, they get that money and it's really hard to get them to need to get that money back.

The horses out of the barn. And I can think of several solutions, like, hey, stop having stop having so many remote classes number one. Number two. Maybe just requires someone at the start of every semester to just show up in person to register for something. I don't know, crazy idea. It just seems like there's so many low tech ways, and the community colleges just seem like these

helpless waifs, unable to solve the problem. So the State Chancellor's Office for the community colleges throughout the state contracted with id dot me to provide verification through the state's college application portal. But students aren't required to use it. Well, then what the heck's what's the point of it. However, local districts can impose more stringent requirements. Why why did you spend a bunch of money to contract with an ID verification thing and then not require it to be

used for a while. Nicole Albo Lopez, the deputy chancellor for the Los Angeles Community College District, said her district was more lenient with college applicants who appeared to be homeless or former foster youth, but quote the bots figured that out again that they keep trying to use this excuse.

all class registrations because of potentially fraudulent activity. So a quarter of everyone in the Los Angeles Community College District was a fraud start that they found that they detected and changed its policy requiring almost all students to verify their identity. Again, why not just have the student show up so that you see it's a real person. It also paid so cure an identity verification company just over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to help with its

fraud detection. Again, why not just have a policy of show up with something that shows you're a human being with a name, like show up with your driver's license. How many people are signed up for classes at an LA community college. You don't have a driver's license, you don't have a birth certificate, you don't have a driver's license, you don't have a social security like something. But fraud attempting.

I mean, if you just required someone to show up one time before this, even if you want to do all remote learning still by the way, it's twenty twenty five. COVID is done. I don't understand why you have to have still like classes on zoom. Stop doing it. We have these community college buildings. Just have them show up at least one time, show some identification, say hi, my name is so and so I am here, take their picture, make sure the picture doesn't match someone else in the system,

and on you go. I don't understand why you need two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from an identity verification company. Fraud attempts persisted nonetheless as wildfires. Now this is great as wildfires raged through Los Angeles County in January and community college has raised millions to support students who lost their homes. Scammers swooped in. Enrollment at East Los Angeles College suddenly doubled that month, but many of the students

were likely fake, said Albo Lopez. People probably thought there was going to be fire money at the San Diego Community College District, where instances of fraud were also on the right. By the way, this is a story from cal Matters reporting on all this. Student services Dean Victor de Vore said his district has found potentially fraudulent students who passed the id dot me verification process. Now, he said, his district screens all applicants, even those who have verified

their identity through id dot me. Well, so why did we pay for id dot me. Dodge said that this teacher from the Berkeley Community College said she asked administrators at the Peralta Community College District to help with all four suspicious students in her class, since she no longer

had the authority to drop them from the course. The district ultimately removed both students who had agreed to meet with her over zoom, and but she said that the other two students, the ones who never responded, are still in the course. So there you go. Are incredibly competent, incredibly efficient state government which basically is letting gazillions and gazillions of people just come into community college, get financial aid and just go on their merry way. Scammers and scammers, scammers,

scammers with gazillions of bots, siphoning millions of dollars. And again, these are the smart These are the people who were smarter than you. These were the people who knew better than you about everything. These are the people who are in control of California state government and have been in control for fifteen years and are going to continue to be in control now when we return. I had another piece published in National Review talking about Javier Bisera that

is next on the John Girardi Show. Well, folks, yet again, I had another piece published in National Review. You can check it out at my Twitter account Twitter dot com slash Fresnejohnny at Fresno Johnny on Twitter on x I still can't get over the name change anyway. Check it out. You can also check out on Facebook the John Girardi media page. Look for John Girardi on Facebook and you'll

probably find it. So I had this piece published in National Review, and the the subject of it was Javier Bisera, our beloved Javier Bsara, former Attorney General of California, former HHS secretary, and I talked about this on the show a bit. But last week Bessarah announced that he was going to run for governor and he did this insane, this hilarious interview with the local Fox affiliate news anchor in Los Angeles, in which he was given like opportunity

after opportunity. He was asked the question basically, well, you know, we've had all these problems with unaffordability, high cost of living in California, high housing, cost of living in California, and we've had unified Democrat control for control going through puberty on the radio, We've had unified Democrat control for the last fifteen years. What would you do different And but Sarah just proceeded to pay nothing. He talked a lot and didn't actually propose any specific policies he would

do differently from his predecessors. The only thing he kept saying he would do is that he would gather together all the experts the best minds, gather together all the experts, have them put all their ideas on the table, scrub it out. He kept using that term, scrub out all the ideas and find what's left, with no sort of indication of like, all right, how are you qualifying someone

as an expert? What does scrubbing an idea mean? What is the criteria which you will use to you know, sift through the ideas of the experts and come up with some solution. Anyway, his but basically be Sarah was presented multiple multiple times with the ability, Hey, say what you're going to do different, and he just refuse to take it, like twice multiple times in this interview, is like no, I'm just not gonna say.

president in twenty twenty eight. She can't do both. She's got to pick pretty much just one or the other. And I had been joking with people, sort of joking, sort of serious texting people after but Sarah announced. I was saying, oh gosh, but Sarah might be worse than Harrah. I mean, they're both pretty much equally bad policy wise.

I mean they're both rabid pro abortion folks. I mean, when you actually look at the laundry list of things Besarah has done with regard to abortion, it's like nightmarish the things he's voted for it because he was in Congress much longer than Harris was. He was a member of the House for years and years and years before he became the Attorney General of California, and the stuff he has promoted over his time is insane. Voted against

banning partial birth abortion even which is nuts. And I was joking with people, I'm a little I actually think Besarah might be worse because I think he might be smarter than Harris. Well, after watching that interview, I kind of want to amend my statement. So here's a little snippet of this interview. This is Lex Michaelson from ATV Fox eleven and he is talking with Sarah. Oh. Sorry, well he's trying to interrupt the radio show. Even Okay, so this is Alex Michaelson from KTTLA in Los Angeles.

I would take the experience I had having to lead this country at the Department of Health and Human Services out of a pandemic, a once in a lifetime pandemic, having to negotiate for the first time in our history the lower prices for prescription drugs of some of the most expensive drugs that our seniors on Medicare program have to use.

old people. So of course they start talking about, oh, taking care of prescription drugs. Note he clearly was briefed before this, this is the stuff you're gonna hit on. You shoeorn it in. However, you can that you negotiated drug prices to help seniors, Like, that's what you're going to talk about, no matter what the question is. This is your answer. Kind of a Clinton esque move. We continue.

someone who maybe already has an idea. He also talks about politics that basically he says that we haven't been willing to do this, gather all the experts together, compile their ideas, sus out what's the best idea because of all the politics. And he does his hand wavy thing as if, well, you know, you understand what I mean, all the politics, you know, all the silly politics. One, as if he's not a very active participant in all the politics. But two, what politics, Okay, Politics in California

is a certain kind of thing. One could say that we don't really have politics because one side controls everything. One side has three quarters of the seats in the state Assembly and the state Senate. One side has maintained the governorship for fifteen straight years now going on sixteen. One side has six of seven seats on the California State Supreme Court. One side completely dominates the entire executive

branch bureaucracy. One side controls all of the various regulatory boards and everything throughout up and down the state of California. One side consistently has a sixty to forty more or less advantage in California state wide elections year after year after year. What politics, there's only one side. They control the politics. They can do whatever they want. Democrats can do whatever they want. Democrats can do anything they want anything. So the idea that, oh, we haven't been able to

bring the experts together, what are you talking about. Democrats love bringing experts together. Democrats love surveying the opinions of academics and think tank people. They can do that anytime. They could have done that at any time over the last fifteen years. I'm sure they have done it multiple multiple, multiple occasions, have done so. And it also it leads me to this. You know, when we return, we'll discuss this. Javier Besara doesn't actually have any of his own ideas.

He just wants to be a vessel for whatever the experts, whoever they are want to do? That's next. On the John Gerardi Show, Javier Basera, when given multiple opportunities to say what he would actually do if he were elected governor to help reduce prices to make California more affordable, refused to say what he would do. Here he is again talking with a local Fox News anchor in Los Angeles who gives him yet another opportunity to say, what

specific policy proposal would you do? This is after already giving this long, you know, filibustering non answer, saying, oh, I just gather experts, all the experts together and listen what they have to say. Here's but Sarah again not really answering.

That'll do it, John Droty Show, See you next time on Power Talk