We are all on the front lines in a growing battle, fraud students aka ghost students. While fraudulent students have always existed, new tools are making them more frequent and persistent. The first step is to educate yourself in how you can help the university fight fraud students. Stay engaged with the regional and national conversation about fraud students.
Who are fraud students?
An increasing number of ghost students are appearing due to the use of AI tools to develop fake student profiles and complete applications. Some fraud students are cases of identity theft, particularly using real transcripts obtained under false pretenses from other schools and then using the information on those to create a fake persona. Other cases are old fashioned grift schemes, such as trusted adults filling out information using minors’ or vulnerable adults’ information without their knowledge.
Why are fraud students created?
The bad actors behind the fraud students typically seeking one of two goals:
The most prevalent goal is to falsely obtain Financial Aid. The student applies to the university, is accepted, registers for classes, gets aid distributed, and then never appears for classes. Typically, the student becomes a ghost once classes start, but some bad actors are keeping up the AI bots to turn in homework so as to run the scam over multiple semesters. This most frequently impacts online, and in particular online undergraduate, classes but there is also a rise in targets to online master’s and graduate certificate programing. The legal system has looked to the school for being responsible that we only admit and issue aid to legitimate students, not unlike how a bar/liquor store is held responsible if they are found serving someone with a fake ID.
The other goal is to maliciously obtain an EDU email account and related Google Drive access. The student applies to the university, is accepted, and then begins to use our platforms to run illegal or predatory actions out of their student issued EDU accounts. These bad actors are using the internet reputation of our smumn.edu domain to make it past other SPAM blockers, until they ruin domain’s trustworthiness and then move on to another school’s account. They may also use the Google Drive to host files so that they appear to be within the U.S. so as to avoid malware detection, when in reality the bad actor is abroad. Often, after running through these scams the bad actor will also use the EDU email account to obtain student accessible discounts and resources like Apple, Microsoft, or Adobe projects to re-sell on the black market. A low trust reputation for our domain on the internet impacts both our own email deliverability to internal and external contacts, and the legitimacy of our website to be flagged as malicious.
How do I and the university stop fraud students?
If you work with pre-students or incoming students, log any interaction or attempt to contact the student in TargetX (the Admission CRM). This serves as the encompassing record of all staff contact leading up to the start of classes, building the picture of the viability of the student record as real or fake.
The top method in place is to verify you are working with a real person. This could be through human to human interactions at campus visits, meeting at events like conferences or fairs, or appointments. It could be through multiple channels of communication, varying from email to phone to video. It’s ensuring your processes are based on student action or requests rather than default progression.
More often that not, trust your gut. If you are unable to reach the person other than email, if they are not able to be consistent with their answers between conversations, or if they aren’t able to answer opened ended questions that is a flag for further investigation of identity. Be suspicious if you aren’t able to speak to the actual student and are instead routed to a family member or friend. Note unusual activity such as multiple student profiles from the same location being created within a few minutes. Bring any concerns to your supervisor or the area’s Director of Admissions for further investigation.
Many schools are putting into place secondary steps to their admission processes, such as in-person or phone interviews, nominal application fees, and verifiable recommendations as a means to combat fraud. While we have not taken these steps, we hope that through your front line efforts to maintain our minimal level of fraud attempts.
These and other tips brought to you by the Office of Enrollment Management Operations (EMOperations@smumn.edu).
