The Justice Department announced on October 29, 2026, a nationwide fraud scheme in which fake students and stolen identities were used to obtain federal student loans. Officials described ghost students kept enrolled semester after semester and loan money routed to foreign-controlled accounts with help from U.S. money mules, including Kenyan nationals. Reporting since has established that fraudsters used AI to complete applications and coursework, and that the stolen identities belonged to Americans who never attended college. The discussion centers on how sophisticated the applications have become and how long the scheme kept ghost students enrolled.