The Brief

They’re called “Pell runners” — after enrolling at a community college they apply for a federal Pell grant, collect as much as $7,400, then vanish.

Since fall 2021, California’s community colleges have given more than $5 million to Pell runners, according to monthly reports they sent to the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office. Colleges also report they’ve given nearly $1.5 million in state and local aid to these scammers.

The chancellor’s office began requiring the state’s 116 community colleges to submit these reports three years ago, after fraud cases surged.

At the time, the office said it suspected 20% of college applicants were fraudulent. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government loosened some restrictions around financial aid, making it easier for students to prove they were eligible, and provided special one-time grants to help keep them enrolled. Once these pandemic-era exceptions ended in 2023 and some classes returned to in-person instruction, college officials said they expected fraud to subside.

It hasn’t. In January, the chancellor’s office suspected 25% of college applicants were fraudulent, said Paul Feist, a spokesperson for the office.

“This is getting significantly worse,” said Todd Coston, an associate vice chancellor with the Kern Community College District. He said that last year, “something changed and all of a sudden everything spiked like crazy.”

Online classes that historically don’t fill up were suddenly overwhelmed with students — a sign that many of them might be fake — Coston said. Administrators at other large districts, including the Los Rios Community College District in Sacramento, the Mt. San Antonio Community College District in Walnut, California and the Los Angeles Community College District, told CalMatters that fraudsters are evading each new cybersecurity strategy.

The reason for the reported increase in fraud is because the chancellor’s office and college administrators are getting better at detecting it, he said. Since 2022, the state has allocated more than $125 million for fraud detection, cybersecurity and other changes in the online application process at community colleges.

The reports the colleges submitted don’t include how much fraud they prevented.

The rise in suspected fraud coincides with years of efforts, both at the state and local level, to increase access to community college. Schools are reducing fees — or making college free — while legislators have worked to simplify and expand financial aid. Those efforts accelerated during the pandemic, when community colleges saw record declines in enrollment.

It’s not surprising, then, that “bad actors” would take advantage of the system’s good intentions, Feist said.

Financial aid fraud is not new

College officials suspect most of the fake students are bots and often, they display tell-tale signs. In Sacramento, community colleges started seeing an influx of applications from Russia, China, and India during the start of the pandemic. Around the same time, administrators at Mt. San Antonio College saw students using Social Security numbers of retirees. Others had home addresses that were abandoned lots. Uncommon email domains, such as AOL.com, were another red flag.

These scams aren’t new. The federal government has long required colleges to report instances of financial aid fraud. Every year, the federal government closes around 40 to 80 cases, including a recent conviction of three California women who stole nearly a million dollars by collecting fraudulent student loans. California community colleges also say they’ve spotted fraudulent applications from people trying to get an .edu email address in order to receive student discounts.

When the chancellor’s office began requiring community colleges to file monthly reports, it asked for the number of fake applications and the amount of money they gave to fraudsters.

CalMatters submitted a public records request for the data, broken down by campus. After the request was initially rejected, CalMatters appealed and received an anonymized copy of all of the monthly reports, lacking individual campus details.

The reports show that between September 2021 and January 2024, the colleges received roughly 900,000 fraudulent applications and gave fraudsters more than $5 million in federal aid, as well as nearly $1.5 million in state and local aid.

The numbers show that fraud represents less than 1% of the total amount of financial aid awarded to community college students in the same time period. It’s hard to tell how accurate the data is because compliance is spotty, with some months missing reports from as many as half the colleges.

More fraud, in more places

To understand how fraud is evolving, the chancellor’s office uses several sources of information and data, Feist said. One indicator is an atypical bump in applications.

“If I saw, for example, that a college that only gets 1,000 applications in some time frame gets 5,000, you kind of know something is probably up,” said Valerie Lundy-Wagner, a vice chancellor for the community college system.

The chancellor’s office provided CalMatters with anonymous application data for each month from September 2021 to January 2024. CalMatters analyzed the data using two different techniques to identify statistical outliers in the application data and asked the office to verify the methodology. The office repeatedly declined.

East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park on March 14, 2024. Photo by Jules Hotz for CalMatters

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CalMatters

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According to the analysis, more than 50 of the state’s 116 community colleges saw at least one unusual spike in the number of applications they received during that time frame. In the last year, colleges have seen more unusual spikes than at any point since 2021. Along with fraud, however, outliers could also reflect normal fluctuations in applications or the overall increase in college enrollment last year.

“What we’re hearing is that (fraud) is happening more widespread than people are letting on, but people just have their heads in the sand because it looks good to have your enrollment going up,” said Coston with the Kern Community College District. Many college administrators say improvements in artificial intelligence have made it easier for people to attempt fraud on a larger scale.

Yet clamping down too hard on fraud can have unintended consequences. More than 20% of community college students in California don’t receive Pell grants they’re eligible for. Administrative hurdles — including the verification process — are one reason why, according to a 2018 study by researchers at UC Davis. To help, the federal government is trying to simplify its financial aid application, but in some cases, it’s created more barriers for students during the rollout this year.

“We’ve overcorrected at times, even in policy, and in how stringently we’re verifying students relative to the amount of fraud in the system,” said Jake Brymer, a deputy director with the California Student Aid Commission. As a result, he said, real low-income students get pushed out.

Kicking real students out of class

Sometimes, the fraud detection backfires on actual students, ousting people like Martin Romero.

In order to graduate from East Los Angeles College, Romero, 20, must take American history, so last fall he enrolled in an online class where students can watch pre-recorded lectures on their own time.

He said it’s all he had time for. Romero takes four classes at East Los Angeles College each semester and serves as its student body president. He also helps out at his family’s auto body shop, sometimes as much as 15 hours a week.

On the first day of class last fall, he said the online portal, Canvas, wasn’t working on his computer.

That day, the American history professor did a test through Canvas, asking students to respond to a prompt in order to prove they were not a bot. Romero didn’t answer, so the professor dropped him from the class.

“I was freaking out,” he said, and wrote to the professor as soon as he found out, begging to be reinstated. The professor told him the class was already full again, so letting him in would mean kicking someone else out.

For the college’s Academic Senate, the faculty group that governs academic matters, fake students is one of the top three issues, said its president, Leticia Barajas.

“We’re frustrated with the fact that some of these courses are getting filled really quickly,” she said. “We see it as an access issue for our students.”

She said there’s been an uptick in recent months, especially in certain kinds of online classes, that has forced professors to focus on hunting bots instead of teaching. Professors now are expected to test their students in the first weeks, asking them to submit answers to prompts, sign copies of the syllabus, or send other evidence to prove they are real.

Increasingly, she said, the bots are evading detection, especially with the help of AI. “They’re submitting assignments. It’s gibberish,” she said.

The endless, multi-million dollar game of combating fraud

Campus and state officials described fraud detection as a game of whack-a-mole. “When we get better at addressing one thing, something else pops up,” said Lundy-Wagner. “That’s sort of the nature of fraud.”

To fight fraud, she said, the chancellor’s office, the 73 independently governed districts and their colleges all must work together, including those who oversee information technology, enrollment and financial aid. Part of the challenge is that the system is so “decentralized,” she said.

The largest reform underway is a new version of CCCApply, the state’s community college application portal, which will offer more cybersecurity, Feist said. He also said there are other “promising” short-term projects.

One of them, a software tool known as ID.Me, launched in February. The contract with the software company, costing more than $3.5 million, gives it permission to check college applicants for identification, including video interviews in certain cases. Privacy experts have warned that the company’s video technology could be racially biased and error-prone.

To mitigate these privacy concerns and avoid creating enrollment barriers, applicants need to opt in to the new verification software.

In the first few days after its implementation, 29% of applicants opted in to ID.Me’s new vetting process. Some applicants started the verification process but never finished, said Feist, while others are ineligible because they’re under the age of 18. The rest chose not to verify their identity for other reasons, including many who are suspected bots.

‘We’re just trying to survive’

In Los Angeles, community colleges have already seen a drop in suspicious applications, said Nicole Albo-Lopez, a vice chancellor with the district. But she’s skeptical the problem is solved. “The lull we see, I don’t believe we’ll be able to sustain,” she said. “They’ll find another way to come in.”

Her district is now concerned that bots are trying to steal data or intellectual property, not just financial aid. “Say I have 400 sections of English 101 online. There are 400 variations of readings, assignments, peer-to-peer questions that somebody can go in and scrape,” Albo-Lopez said.

Barajas said faculty at East Los Angeles College are so overwhelmed by bots they haven’t discussed the potential risk to their intellectual property: “We’re at such a level where we’re just trying to survive.”

Meanwhile, students like Romero who are wrongly mistaken for bots must develop their own survival skills. When the professor denied the request to re-enroll, he signed up for the same course in the one format that was still available — in-person. The class met every Monday and Wednesday at 7:10 a.m., and the professor deducted points for anyone who was late.

“It was torture,” he said, noting that he missed two classes and was late to around four. He finished the class with a B but said he would have had an A if he had gotten into the class he wanted.

As student body president, he said he’s been outspoken about the issue. While he was able to fulfill his history requirement, he worries that other students may not be so lucky.

Data reporter Erica Yee contributed to this reporting. 

That ocean breeze is just not cutting it in schools in Torrance and Long Beach as Southern California reels from a heat wave.

Parents have taken to social media, created petitions and are proposing a bond measure in order to address the sweltering classrooms as temperatures hit triple digits in some areas.

Only 25% of Torrance Unified classrooms have air conditioning, according to a district spokesperson. And while 90% of Long Beach Unified schools have air conditioning, the schools without air conditioning have to bear this heat spell until the end of 2027 when new air conditioning will be in all classrooms.

What are schools doing to beat the heat?

In Long Beach, the district says there are portable fans in classrooms without AC and the district has installed heat-blocking window covers.

"The things that we do immediately and have been doing for several years, hydration stations,” Keith Butler, the deputy superintendent at TUSD, told the school board early this week. “So our nutrition services freezes blocks of ice, puts them into containers with water, and students are — and staff are able to rotate through and at least get ice water.”

There is also a classroom rotation system so everyone gets a turn in cooling zones, he said.

Can schools close on extreme heat days?

Eric Mitchell, a spokesperson for LBUSD, told LAist, “The District will not close schools because of extreme weather unless the City of Long Beach Public Health Department or a state-authorized emergency response agency directs it.”

Baillie echoed his words adding that a state-declared emergency allows schools to close temporarily without needing to make up teaching time. School funding is dependent on attendance and instructional time.

If a local emergency is declared, school districts, she said, must consult with labor unions to adjust the school schedule to either extend the school year or move to a student-free professional development day.

“Our district is actively discussing creating union-approved ‘weather days’ that would provide a mechanism to adjust the schedule,” Baillie said. “Thresholds would be part of that discussion and might focus on when national weather alerts elevate a heat advisory to an extreme heat event, as they did this week.”

So how can Torrance get ACs in the classroom?

School districts like Torrance pay for facility upgrades like new ACs through district issued bond measures. A school district takes a loan and the people in that city pay back that loan through an increase in their property taxes. That is because there is no specific state allocation of funding for major upgrades or construction. Most of the money schools get from the state is spent on instruction and other student services. There have been some occasional grant programs, like CalShape, but no ongoing source of funding.

This week, a petition to get TUSD to place a bond measure on the ballot to fund ACs has already garnered over 1500 signatures.

But, Baillie said, “Third-party polling completed earlier this year showed a willingness to vote for additional future bonds; however, when specifically asked about the costs of specific bonds to fund the $520 million needed to upgrade the electrical systems and install AC at all 34 campuses, polling showed there would not be enough support (bonds require 55% +1 of voters in an election) to pass a bond for AC.”

And so the bond measure was not placed on the upcoming ballot.

Butler, the deputy superintendent, explained during this week’s school board meeting that parents cannot simply donate an AC unit.

“ One [reason] is it's not super effective to have a typical window unit from a home that would be trying to cool a 960 sq. ft. classroom with 27 students and a teacher, maybe an instructional aide,” he said. “But the bigger issue is the ones that are large enough to really do that, the room has to have a large electrical load, and our electrical system within our buildings where most of them were built in the 1960s, it's just not meant to handle what it does.”

LAist reporter Mariana Dale contributed to this article. 

The Orange County District Attorney’s Office is hosting a buyback event Sunday where people can exchange their e-bikes and e-motorcycles for up to $1,000 in gift cards. The goal is to reduce the number of illegal bikes on the road, and give parents an incentive to get dangerous vehicles out of kids’ hands.

“These vehicles are not child’s play, and the consequences are incredibly dangerous and increasingly deadly,” DA Todd Spitzer said in a news release announcing the event.

Communities in Orange County have been grappling with a surge in e-bikes and e-motos on the road, including among young kids, and an accompanying increase in serious crashes.

“Our area has pretty much the highest concentration of e-bike injuries and e-bike accidents in the country,” said Dr. Tetsuya Takeuchi, the trauma medical director at Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo.

Takeuchi said  just over 70% of the children treated at the hospital for e-bike injuries had some level of head injury, “from a simple concussion to devastating brain damage, brain bleed and skull fracture."

A lot of those injuries are among teenagers not wearing helmets, he said. Plus, many e-bikes on the market are too heavy and fast for children to control, Takeuchi said.

Besides safety concerns, tensions have flared with other drivers, pedestrians, and neighbors in areas with heavy concentrations of e-bikes.

Newport-Mesa Unified School District became one of the first districts in the country this year to restrict e-bikes to high school campuses only. District leaders say the policy is working to disincentivize young students from riding e-bikes to school. But at one middle school, students with e-bikes have opted to ride them anyway, parking in the surrounding neighborhood and raising the ire of homeowners.

The DA’s approach

The DA’s office has started to target parents who allow their children to ride e-bikes and e-motorcycles that have been illegally modified for high speeds, sometimes with deadly consequences. In April, the district attorney filed child endangerment charges against a mother from Aliso Viejo after her 14-year-old son struck and killed an 81-year-old man while doing wheelies in the street in Lake Forest. The boy was riding an e-motorcycle souped up to reach 60 mph.

Details of the buyback program

The e-bike and e-motorcycle buyback program is part of the DA’s plan to address safety concerns with e-bikes. Local police departments, hospitals and the California Office of Traffic Safety will also be onsite with information booths.

People can bring in functioning or non-functioning e-bikes, e-motorcycles, e-scooters and pocket bikes and exchange them for gift cards worth up to $1,000 — while supplies last.

The event takes place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 13, at Angel Stadium in Anaheim.

An appeals court issued a ruling Friday that strikes down a federal government effort to block a lower court’s order requiring the construction of 2,550 new housing units on the Veterans Affairs campus in West Los Angeles.

The long-running case, brought forward by disabled veterans struggling with homelessness in the L.A. area, has centered on the use of the sprawling 400-acre VA campus.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter had previously scrutinized leases for the private Brentwood School’s athletic facilities, a parking lot company, an oil drilling enterprise and UCLA’s baseball stadium.

Ruling that the campus was meant to aid veterans, Carter ordered the VA to not renew the leases and quickly build 750 units of temporary housing and 1,800 units of permanent housing.

But Carter’s September 2024 order has been on hold ever since the defendants asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to review his decision.

Case returns to lower court

On Friday, more than two-thirds of the court’s 29 judges ruled against the VA’s petition for a rehearing.

“It's a historic day for veterans,” said Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney with Public Counsel representing the plaintiffs.

“The government has been fighting their veterans, who went to fight on behalf of the nation,” he added. “They've been fighting them like they are the enemy. They went to the district court to fight. They lost.”

Rosenbaum said he’s pleased to see the case return to Carter’s courtroom after a long appeals process. Carter, himself a Marine Corps veteran who served in the Vietnam War, took an active role in pushing the VA to address a homelessness crisis that has thousands of former service members experiencing homelessness on any given night in L.A. County.

Could the VA pursue further appeals? 

Carter has also ordered the VA to stop using veterans' disability payment benefits as a reason to make them ineligible for supportive housing programs due to income restrictions.

But Rob Reynolds, an Iraq War veteran who advocates for L.A.’s veteran community, said the federal government’s attempts to win an appeal could continue.

“The government can still appeal this to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Reynolds said.

When veterans involved in the case first heard today’s news on the 9th Circuit ruling, he said they immediately asked about the potential for further appeals.

“All of us are really hoping that the government stops this fight, and that we can get housing built for our veterans and end this madness once and for all,” Reynolds said.

A spokesperson for the VA declined to comment on the ruling, saying the department does not discuss pending litigation.

Jenny Yang, a comedian from L.A., has been traveling across the country turning immigrant grocery stores into comedy hubs. Now she’s back in L.A. getting ready to start a mini-residency in Highland Park, tape her first one-hour special and share moments from the tour.

Yang kicked off her Good Egg Immigrant Grocery Store Standup Comedy Tour in June in L.A., then took it to 15 cities across the country. She told LAist the decision came as a way to cope with the grief from her dad’s death, 10 failed in vitro fertilization treatments between 2020 and 2025 and seeing the news of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids spread across the country.

She said the idea to tour grocery stores was a way to reclaim those spaces, after immigration enforcement left many afraid to go out and do simple tasks like buying groceries.

“If we cannot laugh in front of a wall of instant ramen around our bok choy," Yang said, "then what is the American dream for?"

Her routine wove in stories about her fertility struggles and the challenges of having to be a “good egg” growing up as the child of immigrant parents from Taiwan. Her hope for the tour was to connect with people, to make jokes and help people feel lighter after.

The tour proceeds went to local nonprofits serving immigrant communities, and Yang said those organizations helped recruit the grocery stores. She said some stores said no at first — they felt overwhelmed by ICE activity in their city, had lost staff or worried about drawing attention.

“That's part of the story of the tour is it's one thing to want to imagine this beautiful world where you can tell jokes inside of immigrant grocery stores," Yang said. "It's another thing to know what those obstacles are, and I think that's still very telling for where we are as a country.”

One moment stood out to Yang: performing at Shuang Hur Supermarket in Minneapolis. It’s near the memorial for Alex Pretti, the nurse that a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and killed in January as federal agents carried out immigration enforcement in the city.

“I was able to talk to Henry, the owner who’s a Chinese American uncle. [He] was so proud of being able to help his regular patrons, who for the most part even though it was an Asian centered grocery store, were majority Latino,” Yang said. “I was able to bear witness to their resilience as a community, what they did to take care of each other.”

Now she’s back in L.A. and is doing a mini-residency at the Outside In Theater at 5317 York Blvd. in Highland Park. Her first show is 6 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 12, followed by shows on Sept. 19 and 26 at the same time. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, and you can find them at Outside In's website.

In February 2027, Yang will be taping her first one-hour special at Rancho Meat Market #1 in Lincoln Heights. She describes it as a love letter to Los Angeles that’s endured so much, from the ICE raids to the January fires.

You can follow Jenny Yang’s work here.