Educational institutions in the United States, as well as those in other countries, are reporting experiencing a fairly new type of fraudulent scheme: the ghost student scam. “Ghost students” are stolen or fake identities used by cyber scammers to apply to a college. Primary targets of this scam are schools with fewer application requirements, such as community colleges, and students who may be in debt and quick to provide personal information in exchange for purportedly good loan terms. Once accepted to the college, ghost students use their fake or stolen identities to pose as legitimate students and enroll in classes, despite having no intention of ever attending. After enrolling, ghost students can use their “.edu” email address to send phishing emails and take advantage of free cloud storage space that the college affords students. In the most serious cases, ghost students use their status as an “active student” to apply for and receive thousands of dollars in financial aid. After receiving the funds, the scammers will pocket the money and disappear.
Schools have seen more and more ghost students since the pandemic, as the availability of online classes has made it significantly easier for fraudsters to perpetrate the scheme. Indeed, in June 2023, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that nearly 20 percent of the admissions applications submitted to community colleges in California (nearly 460,000 applications) were fraudulently submitted by would-be ghost students. In March 2023, three California women were indicted on wire fraud charges for using the identities of prisoners to enroll in a California community college and fraudulently obtain student loans totaling more than $1 million.
Needless to say, the ghost student scam is a problem for colleges. In addition to the security threats posed by granting cybercriminals access to a college’s IT network and email tenant, if ghost students obtain financial aid through state or federal grants, they will have taken grant money that could have been provided to legitimate applicants. While ghost students do not typically get admitted to schools in place of legitimate applicants, they can create significant headaches for admissions officers, school faculty, administrators and students. When ghost students enroll in classes to perpetuate the scheme, they take class spots away from legitimate students. Come class time, teachers are left with empty spots in classes that, according to rosters, should be full. In some instances, schools have added classes to accommodate what they believed was high student demand for the class, only to later find those additional classes nearly empty.
As always, combating fraud is best accomplished through meaningful cybersecurity and data privacy policies, processes, and collective responsibility. To “bust” these ghost students, schools should consider adopting verification processes that must be completed for students to enroll in classes and/or qualify for financial assistance. This may include requiring students to register in person or using real-time video for identity verification. Schools may also consider using biometric authentication solutions as a “key” needed to access certain resources.
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