# What Are Ghost Students? Financial Aid Fraud Explained

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-college-investor-audio-show-414113/what-are-ghost-students-financial-aid-fraud-explained
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-college-investor-audio-show-414113/what-are-ghost-students-financial-aid-fraud-explained.md
Podcast: [The College Investor Audio Show](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-college-investor-audio-show-414113)
Published: 2026-04-02T10:30:00+00:00
Episode link: https://thecollegeinvestor.com/77350/what-are-ghost-students-financial-aid-fraud-explained/
Audio file: https://episodes.captivate.fm/episode/7314f011-3b74-47e8-b13b-5d0ff26f4930.mp3
Processing state: processed
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-college-investor-audio-show-414113/episodes/what-are-ghost-students-financial-aid-fraud-explained
Duration seconds: 557

## Resource

Across the country, colleges are discovering that their enrollment rolls are full of students who don’t actually exist. They’re called “ghost students”—fabricated or stolen identities used by scammers to enroll in college courses, trigger federal financial aid disbursements , and then vanish with the money. The fraud has grown so large that the U.S. Department of Education says it prevented more than $1 billion in attempted student aid theft in 2025 alone. And the problem is getting worse.

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-college-investor-audio-show-414113/episodes/what-are-ghost-students-financial-aid-fraud-explained/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-college-investor-audio-show-414113/what-are-ghost-students-financial-aid-fraud-explained.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.