OPINION:
Would you be surprised to learn that, from January 2015 to February 2024, one person submitted more than 1,200 fraudulent federal student aid claims involving more than 100 schools across 24 states?
In return, he qualified for up to $16 million in federal student aid and received more than $10 million.
It sounds like a Hollywood script, but it is true.
Brandon Robinson of Detroit was charged last year by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan for his role in a federal student aid fraud scheme.
He is not alone. In just the past two years, several U.S. attorney’s offices have charged other people involved in financial aid fraud.
A Detroit woman pleaded guilty to wire fraud after participating in a decade-long scheme to illegally obtain more than $2.5 million in federal student aid funds through more than 80 fraudulent applications. A Texas professor admitted to theft of government funds and aggravated identity theft after submitting more than 100 false student financial aid applications, resulting in at least $600,000 in losses to taxpayers.
A Texas resident carried out a decade-long scheme using stolen identities to apply for admission and financial aid to online colleges, receiving nearly half a million dollars in aid before he was sentenced in August 2025. A Florida woman submitted more than 50 fraudulent applications under more than a dozen identities, resulting in nearly $1 million in improper aid disbursements. More than a quarter of that was deposited into her personal accounts.
She was sentenced in July 2025.
A North Carolina resident was sentenced in June 2025 to a term of imprisonment for wire fraud stemming from a scheme that generated more than $4.7 million in federal student aid across multiple community colleges. A Missouri woman was sentenced in February 2025 after using the identities of fellow inmates to fraudulently obtain more than $850,000 in student loans and tax refunds.
These are just a few examples of a broader and growing problem within the federal student aid system.
In the past five years alone, financial aid fraud has escalated sharply. Losses now exceed $100 million annually as of 2023, up from less than $50 million a year during the pandemic emergency and less than $10 million a year before 2020.
In March, President Trump announced a task force to combat fraud more broadly, citing estimates that Medicaid fraud in Minnesota alone totals billions of dollars. Shortly thereafter, Department of Education officials announced temporary changes to the student aid verification process aimed at preventing identity theft while developing longer-term safeguards to protect taxpayers and families pursuing postsecondary opportunities.
At the end of last year, the Department of Education staff announced that they had prevented more than $1 billion in federal student aid fraud because of the implementation of enhanced fraud controls, including mandatory identity verification for certain first-time applicants.
More recently, the department, in partnership with a financial services firm, launched a real-time identity fraud detection capability within the Free Application for Federal Student Aid system. This fraud detector screens applicants as they complete the application and assigns a risk level to each submission. Applicants identified as low or moderate risk proceed through the process as usual.
The new system requires high-risk applicants to verify their identities in real time by presenting a government-issued ID on camera before completing their applications. Applicants who fail verification will have their applications rejected until the issue is resolved.
Institutions can now assist applicants in addressing these issues, with financial aid administrators required to follow federal guidelines before reinstating an application.
The department estimates that these new anti-fraud measures will save taxpayers more than $1 billion during this year’s cycle. The efforts build on earlier improvements to the system.
In late September, the Education Department launched the 2026-2027 Free Application for Federal Student Aid, marking the earliest release in the program’s history. The latest version received a 97% satisfaction rate from participants.
This stands in stark contrast with the way the program was administered under the previous administration. Testimony from Government Accountability Office experts in 2024 revealed that the redesigned student aid form was not available until 90 days after its intended release.
Meanwhile, approximately 4 million calls to the department’s call center went unanswered in the first five months of the rollout, and more than 40 known technical issues plagued the application process, leaving families stranded without clear guidance or solutions.
As the Trump administration continues to reform and streamline the Department of Education, the agency will be working closely with the Treasury Department. Such a partnership could help simplify the financial aid process.
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid already relies heavily on tax data provided by students and their families, information that the Treasury Department already collects and maintains. This makes the collaboration an opportunity to improve efficiency and verification.
Taken together, this interagency agreement, alongside the department’s recent anti-fraud efforts, will strengthen oversight, protect taxpayers and improve the ability of federal student aid to better serve the students and families it is intended to support.
• Madison Marino Doan is a policy analyst for The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy.
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