Delta College seeks to ramp up cybersecurity after faculty discovered bots posing as real students with the intention of getting money through illicit means.
According to the Los Angeles Times, more than 65,000 fraudulent students have been identified in more than 100 community colleges throughout the state of California.
Director of Information Technology Chelsy Pham states at least 425 fake accounts have been identified at Delta College so far.
“What we know for sure is that there’s 425 imposters and about 275 actually successfully enrolled in classes,” said Pham.
Now Delta College is taking steps to filter out fake accounts in response to the scam and warn students about cybercrime.
During the Board of Trustees’ Sept. 7 meeting, Pham said Delta is working with other community colleges and the Chancellor’s Office to resolve cybersecurity issues.
“We’re going to work with other community college colleagues to see what we can do with putting in stock gaps, and definitely working with the Chancellor’s Office and our Tech Center,” said Pham.
“We’re going to have tips for students on cybercrime on what to watch out for and not give sensitive information away,” she added.
Fraudulent students are not new to the California community college system and is an issue that has been around for years.
“Application fraud has been a long time problem at California community colleges, and the perpetrators are constantly changing their approach and tactics,” said Director of Marketing and Communications Alex Breitler.
To help identify these fake accounts, Pham pointed out several behavioral patterns most commonly seen from the scammers.
“They are soliciting students to join study groups for money and they’re entertaining us with sob stories with GoFundMe campaigns to try to get money from students and other people,” said Pham.
This incident raised concerns about massive financial aid fraud.
Director of Financial Aid and Scholarships Tina Lent said the department is currently identifying these students and acted quickly to ensure aid wasn’t going to the scammers.
“The Financial Aid Department has been working very closely with the IT Department, Admissions and Records Department and instruction to identify these students,” said Lent. “As soon as all of these bot students were identified, we looked to check the financial aid status of each student and canceled all aid and disbursements right away. However, the fraud that was identified did not negatively impact the actual Delta College students.”
To continue responding to this issue, Delta College plans to set up a task force.
“We’re looking at a cybersecurity and fraud prevention team that can help us work on this,” said Pham.