QuickWire: Another College Falls Victim to Online Aid Scam

Pima Community College, in Arizona, gave out nearly $270,000 in federal financial aid to scammers posing as online students, reports the Arizona Daily Star. The fraud began in July and was detected in October, according to the newspaper. “The case is one of more than 100 reported nationwide this year in which fraud rings exploit weaknesses in identity-checking for so-called distance students, who are never physically present in the classroom,” the Daily Star said. Last year Rio Salado College, one of the nation’s largest providers of online education, lost nearly half-a-million dollars in an online aid scam. That case fueled fears about the vulnerability of distance education to fraud.