But Rich says that’s a truly conservative estimate — most rosters she reviewed have more than 10 percent fake students. The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office said in August 2021 that about 20 percent of the traffic for the system-wide student application system, CCCApply, is “malicious and bot-related.”
“Even if it’s creating an .edu email account to get Apple discounts, which people do, that’s fraud,” Rich said, also speculating that some email scammers were committing financial aid fraud as well.
While she keeps an eye on this in LACCD, recording the new fake accounts as they pop up, the problem has spread like wildfire throughout California’s community college system.