The Brief

For years, scammers have targeted community colleges across the state, posing as students in order to steal money from scholarships or government financial aid.

Recent state reports suggest the problem is getting worse, and college leaders say they’re worried that the Trump administration’s cuts to the U.S. Department of Education could hamper fraud prevention and investigations.

In 2021, the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office reported that about 20% of college applicants were likely fake. In January 2024, the state said it was up to about 25%. 

Now it’s around 34%, according to the most recent data from the last calendar year. “Those are all the ones that are stopped,” said John Hetts, executive vice chancellor for the data team at the chancellor’s office.

The scammers that aren’t stopped have stolen millions in taxpayer dollars. CalMatters reported that these fake students received more than $5 million from the federal government and nearly $1.5 million from the state, according to anonymized reports that colleges submitted to the state from September 2021 through December 2023.

Faculty say they’re exasperated from working as detectives, trying to suss out which students are real. They say scammers are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence to infiltrate classes, using tools like ChatGPT to pose as students. Students say these fraudsters are taking coveted seats and preventing them from enrolling in classes they need to graduate.

In the last 12 months, colleges reported giving more than $10 million in federal dollars to fake students and over $3 million in state money. Data from the first few months of 2025 show that colleges have already given away more than $3 million in federal aid and over $700,000 in state dollars.

The scope of fraud is “relatively small,” said Chris Ferguson, a finance executive at the chancellor’s office, especially when compared to the roughly $1.7 billion in federal aid and $1.5 billion in state aid given to California’s community college students last year. He also said it’s likely that colleges have improved their ability to detect fraud over time, potentially inflating the reporting numbers.

State lawmakers have allocated roughly $150 million toward cybersecurity since 2022, and the chancellor’s office has brought in numerous tech companies — including ID.Me, N2N, and LexisNexis — to help authenticate students. But Hetts said none of these interventions will ever completely eliminate fraud because each time the state gets better at fighting fraud, the bad actors adapt — the tech equivalent to the “Red Queen hypothesis.”

College leaders also rely on the federal education department to help find scammers. The department is broadly responsible for administering federal financial aid and for preventing and investigating related fraud. The office that administers federal aid has lost about half of its staff through layoffs, voluntary buyouts and retirements. California Attorney General Rob Bonta recently joined other Democratic attorneys general in suing the Trump administration over these cuts, alleging that they violate the U.S. Constitution.

Although not technically part of the lawsuit or the layoffs, the education department’s Office of Inspector General, which is responsible for fraud detection, has also lost staff due to buyouts and early retirements. Since Oct. 1, the Office of Inspector General has lost “more than 20% of its staff,” said Catherine Grant, a spokesperson for the office, including “experienced auditors and investigators.”

“As for how these staffing changes affect the Office of Inspector General’s ability to investigate student aid fraud in California, we are committed to fighting student aid fraud wherever we find it,” Grant said. “But we are limited with what we can do based on our limited resources.”

Fake students using AI

In 2023, librarian Heather Dodge started to notice something odd about the students who took her online research course at Berkeley City College. To connect with students and make the class more engaging, Dodge said she always began the course by asking students to submit a video introducing themselves using their webcam or an iPhone.

“It’s a very low bar,” she said, but “I started noticing that there would be a handful of students that wouldn’t submit that assignment in the first week.” First, she would send them a message, and then, if they still didn’t respond, she’d drop them from the class.

As long as the teacher drops a student within a certain time frame, in this case the first week, their enrollment in that class is void, and the student can’t seek financial aid for that course. After the first week, however, it’s harder to remove them.

This semester, she said she started with 35 students. Within the first week, she kicked out a few students who didn’t submit a video, but four students found a workaround, sending her a written response instead. The text was generic, she said, “like something ChatGPT would write,” but she wasn’t willing to drop them from the course.

“Are these students who are having technological challenges? Maybe they didn’t have a webcam, maybe they didn’t understand the assignment. It was really hard to suss out what was going on with them.”

Dodge said she’s also worried about how it looks to drop so many students in a class. Community colleges’ funding is largely pegged to enrollment, and the Peralta Community College District, where Dodge teaches, is suffering from enrollment declines and faces major financial losses. “If they see I’m running a class that starts with 35 students and ends with 15, that looks terrible.”

Throughout the class, the four suspicious students continued to submit generic assignments, and eventually, she said she reached out to each one to set up a Zoom meeting. Two never responded. One student did meet with her but said that their camera and microphone weren’t working, so they texted instead. The other student appeared on camera but could hardly speak English, Dodge said. Each time she would ask a question over Zoom, the student would silently wait for their phone to translate. She said the student’s answers “were basically nonsensical.”

Bots impersonate homeless students, former foster youth 

By statute, California’s community colleges are required to accept any legitimate student, and state leaders have spent decades trying to make it easier for students to enroll. Community college students must sign an affidavit, swearing the veracity of their information, but otherwise, many colleges don’t independently verify a student’s address or identity.

“We serve a large proportion of students who may not have documentation for a variety of reasons,” said Hetts, with the state chancellor’s office, such as students who are homeless, those who are undocumented, and those who are leaving the foster care system or don’t have a relationship with their parents.

Students walk through the MiraCosta College campus in Oceanside on Sept. 26, 2024.

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Adriana Heldiz

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The state chancellor’s office contracted with ID.Me to provide verification through the state’s college application portal, but students aren’t required to use it. However, local districts can impose more stringent requirements.

For a while, Nicole Albo-Lopez, the deputy chancellor for the Los Angeles Community College District said her district was more lenient with college applicants who appeared to be homeless or former foster youth, but “the bots figured that out.”

Last year, she said the district purged roughly a quarter of all class registrations because of potentially fraudulent activity and changed its policy, requiring almost all students to verify their identity. It also paid Socure, an identity verification company, just over $250,000 to help with its fraud detection.

But fraud attempts persisted nonetheless. As wildfires raged through Los Angeles County in January and community colleges raised millions to support students who lost their homes, scammers swooped in. Enrollment at East Los Angeles College suddenly doubled that month, but many of the students were likely fake, said Albo-Lopez. “People probably thought there was going to be fire money.”

At the San Diego Community College District, where instances of fraud are also on the rise, Student Services Dean Victor DeVore said his district has found potentially fraudulent students who passed the ID.Me verification process. Now, he said his district screens all applicants, even those who have verified their identity through ID.Me.

Dodge said she asked administrators at the Peralta Community College District for help with all four suspicious students in her class since she no longer had the authority to drop them from the course. The district ultimately removed both students who had agreed to meet with her over Zoom, but she said that the other two students — the ones who never responded — are still in the course. Mark Johnson, a spokesperson for the district, said that those two students are “under review at this time.”

Regardless, Dodge said that both students failed the class.

FBI investigates fraud

Colleges are required to submit monthly reports about suspicious applications to both the state and to the U.S. Department of Education, though colleges say the federal government rarely informs them about what it does with that information.

Through a public records request, CalMatters found that in June 2022, the U.S. Department of Education opened an investigation into a fraud ring at Los Angeles Harbor College and West Los Angeles College, where scammers used the identities of “at least 57 individuals” to steal more than $1.1 million in federal aid and loans over the prior four years. In another memo, the Department of Education alerted the FBI about a fraud ring tied to Los Angeles City College that was enrolling people in classes “for the sole purpose of obtaining financial aid refund money,” potentially stealing over $1 million using the identities of 70 different people.

Grant said the education department is still working on the Los Angeles fraud investigations but declined to comment on them, since the department has a policy of keeping information about ongoing investigations confidential.

Since 2020, the education department has also investigated financial aid disbursements at Merced College, Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz County and College of the Siskiyous in Weed. Another four California community colleges have reached out to the department for help regarding fraud or concerns about the misuse of federal aid, according to the department’s records.

Community college leaders say they wish they heard more from the federal government about its fraud investigations, and some say the silence is worrisome, especially now that the education department has lost so many staff.

For Hetts, with the chancellor’s office, it’s a direct correlation: “When you direct less resources to combating fraud…you’re going to get more fraud.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Two of the three hikers found dead last week at Mt. Baldy have been identified.

They are Juan Sarat Lopez, 37, and Bayron Pedro Ramos Garcia, 36, according to authorities on Saturday. Both men are Guatemalan nationals living in Los Angeles.

Investigators believe the two fell from the Devil’s Backbone Trail the same day they were found.

Their bodies were discovered when a search-and-rescue crew was dispatched to search for another missing hiker, who was reported to have fallen 500 feet near Devil’s Backbone Trail.

That person was identified later as Marcus Alexander Muench Casanova, 19, of Seal Beach.

Trails still closed

Hiking trails on and around Mount Baldy have been closed by authorities after the deceased hikers were found, until 11:59 p.m. Jan. 7.

“Our primary responsibility is the preservation of life,” Sheriff Shannon Dicus said in a social media message sent on New Year's Eve. “Closing these trails is a necessary step to mitigate ongoing risks. We urge the community to respect these boundaries.”

The following trails will be closed:

• Forest System Trail No. 7W12 - Mount Baldy Trail
• Forest System Trail No. 7W02 - Mount Baldy Bowl Trail
• Forest System Trail No. 7W05 - Devil’s Backbone Trail
• Forest System Trail No. 7W06 - Three T’s Trail
• Forest System Trail No. 7W07 - Icehouse Canyon Trail
• Forest System Trail No. 7W07A - Chapman Trail
• Forest System Trail No. 7W08 - Ontario Peak Trail

Hours after the U.S. military captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, President Trump made it clear that the U.S. operation is about — at least in part — control of Venezuela's oil.

"We're going to have our very large U.S. oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country," Trump said during a press conference Saturday.

The capture of Maduro and Trump's comments comes at a time when even a country like Venezuela — with one of the biggest oil resources in the world — isn't a sure bet for attracting major oil companies.

Many oil companies have been bruised by their past experiences operating in the country. The global oil market is currently facing an oversupply. Oil prices are below $60 a barrel, and long-term projections for oil demand are unclear as the world shifts to more electric vehicles.

Trump promises to "run the country" and make way for U.S. oil companies in Venezuela. However, there's a long history of U.S. interventions in Latin America and the Middle East not going well, oil experts tell NPR.

Here's what you need to know about Venezuela's oil.

Venezuela has huge oil reserves, but now produces a fraction of what it used to

Venezuela was once one of the biggest global oil producers and was one of the main founders of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), a group of some of the world's biggest oil producers, whose decisions help determine global oil prices. Venezuela has the largest proven reserves of oil in the world, according to OPEC.

But while the country was producing more than 3 million barrels a day a few decades ago, today Venezuela produces only about a million barrels a day, or roughly 1% of global oil output. The U.S. produces about 13 million barrels a day.

Much of Venezuela's oil went to refineries in the U.S. Now much of it goes to China.

Not all crude oil is the same — some oil is physically lighter and easier for refineries to process. Venezuela's oil is heavy and dense, and requires special refineries. Burning any type of oil contributes to climate change, but Venezuela's oil is "among the dirtiest oils in the world to produce when it comes to global warming," says Paasha Mahdavi, associate professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The El Palito refinery rises above Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, Sunday, Dec. 21, 2025.

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Matias Delacroix

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Venezuela owes some U.S. oil companies billions

U.S. oil companies like Chevron began drilling in Venezuela about one hundred years ago and played a key role in developing the country's oil sector.

But around 2004 to 2007, then-President Hugo Chávez "basically forcefully renegotiated contracts" with international oil companies, says Francisco Monaldi, director of the Latin America Energy Program at the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University.

ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips left the country in 2007 and then took the Venezuelan government to international arbitration courts. The courts ordered Venezuela to pay ConocoPhillips over $10 billion and ExxonMobil over $1 billion. Venezuela has only paid a fraction of those sums to ExxonMobil and to ConocoPhillips.

Chevron, however, stayed in Venezuela — although " they didn't like it," says Gerald Kepes, president of Competitive Energy Strategies, an energy consultancy in Washington, D.C.

Chevron today produces about a quarter of Venezuela's oil.

In response to the news of Maduro's capture, Chevron spokesperson Bill Turenne said in an email, "Chevron remains focused on the safety and wellbeing of our employees, as well as the integrity of our assets. We continue to operate in full compliance with all relevant laws and regulations."

Trump has said that Venezuela has "stolen" U.S. investment in the country's energy sector.

Will U.S. oil companies return?

Venezuela is what the oil industry calls a "brownfield" — meaning it's well established, and oil companies have a fairly good idea of what they will find when they drill. For companies like ConocoPhillips, returning to Venezuela could be an opportunity to recoup some of the billions owed to them by the government, Monaldi says.

In an email, ConocoPhillips spokesperson Dennis Nuss wrote, "ConocoPhillips is monitoring developments in Venezuela and their potential implications for global energy supply and stability. It would be premature to speculate on any future business activities or investments."

ExxonMobil did not respond to a request for comment.

Still, this isn't the best time to add to the global oil supply, Monaldi says. There's currently a worldwide glut of oil. Also, because Venezuela's oil is particularly bad for the climate, that makes it less attractive for European oil companies with climate goals, Monaldi says.

Aerial view of a ship at the Demerara river in Georgetown, Guyana on August 29, 2025.

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JOAQUIN SARMIENTO

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Venezuela's neighbor is a rising oil star

Next door to Venezuela is Guyana — a country that recently discovered over 10 billion barrels of oil and is a key emerging player in the international oil industry.

Guyana's oil is lighter than Venezuela's, less polluting, and has lower taxes than Venezuela, Monaldi says. There's also no national oil company in Guyana, as there is in Venezuela.

"All that makes for Guyana to be one of the most attractive oil places in the world," Monaldi says.

While ExxonMobil is no longer in Venezuela, it is a major player in Guyana.

For years, Venezuela and Guyana have had a territorial dispute that has also been related to oil rights. Last March, Venezuelan vessels entered Guyanese territorial waters approaching offshore oil vessels belonging to ExxonMobil.

"Without a doubt, with a changing regime, Guyana should feel more secure," Monaldi says.

Lack of political stability could be a deal breaker 

Some increase in Venezuela's oil production could happen fairly quickly with more financial support and improved management, according to an analysis by Wood Mackenzie, an energy consultancy.

But Mahdavi says the Trump administration's plans to jumpstart the industry will be difficult. He notes that it took nearly two decades to revitalize Iraq's oil industry after the U.S. invasion, though corruption and mismanagement remain pervasive.

And ultimately, notes Kepes, if it's unclear who is in charge in Venezuela, oil companies will have concerns about the long-term viability of their contracts. "No one's going to start investing on the ground in a place where there's no legal contract and viable permission to operate or if there's concerns about political stability and violence," he says.

Copyright 2026 NPR

The Palisadian-Post, the community paper that’s been covering the Pacific Palisades for nearly 100 years, printed its final issue on Christmas Day.

After January’s fires, subscriptions basically fell to zero, as did advertisers, according to a memo announcing the paper's closure from owner Alan Smolinisky.

But its end brings with it nearly a century of memories.

The Post remembered

The seaside community of Pacific Palisades was founded by members of the Methodist church in 1922. Six years later, the first issue of what would become the Pali-Post was published to document town life.

“ A little 12-point, 12-page tabloid, they called the Palisadian” said Bill Bruns, a former editor of the Palisadian-Post from 1993 to 2013, and member of the Pacific Palisades Historical Society. Before he was editor, Bruns was a loyal reader of the paper.

In 1934, the paper was purchased by Clifford Clearwater, one of the first settlers of the Palisades. Bruns said Clearwater had been an ambulance driver in World War I, and was the Palisades's original postal carrier where he would deliver mail by horseback.

He wasn’t trained as a journalist, but his life experiences gave him the confidence to keep publishing the paper, serving as its photographer and editor until his death in 1956.

“He had a friend who had a little plane and he would take Cliff up and Cliff would shoot these great aerial pictures of the town growing, hanging out of this little plane,” Bruns said.

Over the years, Clearwater took about 3,000 aerial photos of the community as it developed and grew. All of those pictures survived the Palisades Fire and are stored at the Santa Monica Library for the public to see.

In 1950, a rival paper — the Pacific Palisades Post — came on the scene and by the end of the next decade, the two papers would merge to become the Pali-Post that most people think of today.

Bill Bruns (back right) poses for a picture with the rest of the "Palisadian-Post" staff in 2013.

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Bill Bruns

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A 'heyday' for community news

The paper changed hands again in 1981 and a little over a decade later, Bruns began as editor.

With an average of about 30 pages to fill every week, he said what readers appreciated most was the focus on local news. Reporters went in person to cover stories and were often seen at local meetings, sports events and businesses.

“So they knew that they were getting firsthand coverage of what was happening in the town,” Bruns said.

Readers like Sue Kohl who lived in the Palisades for 32 years, respected the breadth of its coverage.

The Post covered school sports her children participated in. She said it featured plenty of advertisements from neighborhood businesses, including her own real estate agency. She especially liked the small town bulletin feel of the paper.

“They talked about local issues. They talked about local residents, whether they were famous or not famous,” Kohl said.

One of her favorite sections to read was the “Two Cents” column, stray thoughts and opinions from Palisadians. She also appreciated the in-depth obituaries.

Bruns said the obit section was always appreciated by the families since the paper didn’t charge for them.

“ Because we didn't charge, people would write nice obituaries because they weren't worried about the cost and they would give us a picture and we ran those,” Bruns said.

The old "Pacific-Palisades Post" newsroom from Bruns' time as editor. After 2013, it was converted into a real estate office by the new owner, which was subsequently lost to the fire.

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Patricia Williams/Patricia Williams

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Bill Bruns

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The paper was known for its responsiveness to the community. The staff took pitches from readers, Bruns said, and put the spotlight on Palisadians themselves.

There was a “golden couples” column for anybody married for 50 years or more; a “young Palisadians” column for enterprising youngsters and a “people on the move” column for the movers and shakers.

The paper also announced the first birth in the community each year.

“It was kind of a cool thing to be the first baby in the Palisades. They gave them prizes like baby gifts and things. Very local, community driven, small town emphasis,” Kohl said.

More than a paper

That small town emphasis remained a constant. Gabriella Bock was a reporter at the Pali-Post from 2016 to 2018. She said it her first real newsroom experience.

Gabriella Bock's old desk at the Pali-Post office on Alma Real.

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Gabriella Bock

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“ We were a small, tight-knit news team of myself, a sports reporter and one other staff reporter,” Bock said. “So I was able to be taken under their wing and learn a lot in a short period of time.”

Gabirella Bock's former media pass from 2017.

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Gabriella Bock

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Gabriella Bock

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But the paper was more than just a place to work. When Bock got married, her fellow reporters wrote a marriage announcement in the paper. When she was pregnant, they threw her a baby shower.

When she heard about the paper closing its doors, she said it was heartbreaking. To Bock it’s not about being nostalgic or sentimental about a former workplace. She sees the giant hole the disappearance of another local newsroom can leave people with.

“It's how people learn what's happening on their block, in their schools, in their city, and when that disappears, people oftentimes will lose a reason to stay engaged at all,” said Bock.

Gabriella Bock works the line at the Gracias Senor food truck for a Pali-Post story. The food truck often parked outside of the Ralph's grocery store on Alma Real.

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Gabriella Bock

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Gabriella Bock

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Bruns echoes Bock’s sentiment. He saw the paper as a unifier of the community in his two-decade tenure.

“It just made people feel more like they really liked their town, and the Palisades Post was a crucial element in that whole spirit of community,” Bruns said.

After Bill Bruns (left) retired in 2013 he received a commendation from former LA City Councilman Mike Bonin (right) for his years of service in local journalism.

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Bills Bruns

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Bill Bruns

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Kohl, whose home is more than halfway rebuilt, hopes that the spirit will return one day.

Last time she drove through her old neighborhood of The Alphabet Streets she saw several homes in the process of coming back up.

“I have faith that we will all come back, and I hope that the newspaper finds that as well,” said Kohl.

Sue Kohl and her dog Maisie stand in the construction site of her home being rebuilt in the Pacific Palisades.

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Sue Kohl

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Sue Kohl

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President Donald Trump launched a military strike against Venezuela overnight, resulting in the capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife.

In a news conference this morning, Trump said the U.S. is going to "run" that country, until a proper transition is in place.

California lawmakers are reacting to the attacks.

"Nicolás Maduro was a thug and an illegitimate leader of Venezuela, terrorizing and oppressing its people for far too long and forcing many to leave the country. But starting a war to remove Maduro doesn’t just continue Donald Trump’s trampling of the Constitution, it further erodes America’s standing on the world stage and risks our adversaries mirroring this brazen illegal escalation," says Sen. Adam Schiff, a democrat.

Republican Congressman Darrell Issa, who represents areas including Murrieta and the Temecula Valley, says President Trump, "has taken strong action to protect America’s homeland from neighboring threats of narcoterrorism and the scourge of deadly narcotics. The Trump administration has my full support."

Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla says, "Let’s be absolutely clear: Trump’s military action in Venezuela is unlawful without approval from Congress."

California Governor Gavin Newsom did not directly response to the attacks. He zeroed in on a comment Trump made about the L.A. fires during the news conference.

"Unless Trump is finally delivering the federal aid survivors need to rebuild after the horrific fires — nearly a year after California first requested it — he should keep Los Angeles out of his mouth," Newsom's office says on social.