Public colleges disperse hundreds of thousands of dollars in financial aid to scammers; professor says it’s abuse of taxpayer dollars and real students can’t enroll in needed courses The California Community Colleges system is being overwhelmed by thousands of fake students, or “bots,” applying and enrolling in classes to scam money from financial aid. Kim Rich, a criminal justice professor at Pierce College, first noticed the issue during the summer semester in June 2021, when she discovered multiple “students” in her online class exhibiting suspicious behavior: submitting work done by someone outside the class, registering for the same courses, and...