{"id":17826,"date":"2025-05-18T16:46:20","date_gmt":"2025-05-18T16:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=17826"},"modified":"2025-05-18T16:46:21","modified_gmt":"2025-05-18T16:46:21","slug":"ai-bots-in-california-steal-over-10-million-in-federal-financial-aid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=17826","title":{"rendered":"AI Bots in California Steal Over $10 Million in Federal Financial Aid"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>&#8220;Bots create AI-generated student profiles, apply for enrollment, and submit minimal online coursework\u2014often AI-generated\u2014to stay enrolled long enough to receive federal and state aid disbursements intended for low-income students. The scammers are known as &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/calmatters.org\/education\/higher-education\/2024\/04\/financial-aid-fraud\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Pell runners<\/a>,&#8221; who disappear after collecting the $7,400 federal grant.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/04\/30\/ai-bots-in-california-steal-over-10-million-in-federal-financial-aid\">https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/04\/30\/ai-bots-in-california-steal-over-10-million-in-federal-financial-aid<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Bots create AI-generated student profiles, apply for enrollment, and submit minimal online coursework\u2014often AI-generated\u2014to stay enrolled long enough to receive federal and state aid disbursements intended for low-income students. The scammers are known as &#8220;Pell runners,&#8221; who disappear after collecting the $7,400 federal grant.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/04\/30\/ai-bots-in-california-steal-over-10-million-in-federal-financial-aid\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1129,304,94,356,2208,1977,1976,1036],"class_list":["post-17826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-ai","tag-california","tag-colleges","tag-education","tag-financial-aid","tag-scammers","tag-scams","tag-theft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17826"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17827,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17826\/revisions\/17827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}