ED Hosts Summit Focused on Combatting Fraud in Student Aid Programs
By Maria Carrasco, NASFAA Staff Reporter
The Department of Education (ED), along with inspectors general, institutional leaders, federal and state law enforcement, and industry partners, met in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday for a day devoted to discussing and sharing ideas to combat fraud in the federal student aid programs.
A key priority for the Trump administration has been to combat financial aid fraud. Most recently, in April, the administration launched new identity fraud prevention measures for the FAFSA form.
ED Under Secretary Nicholas Kent gave a keynote address at the start of the summit, highlighting the administration's efforts to combat fraud and noting that the department has prevented more than $2 billion in attempted federal student aid fraud from reaching bad actors.
Since ED has launched its FAFSA fraud detection measures in April, Kent said Federal Student Aid (FSA) has rejected over 53,000 fraudulent applications and has saved more than $212 million from going to fraudulent actors. He also noted that ED has identified more than $1 billion in fraudulent applications for the 2026-27 FAFSA cycle, which started on October 1, 2025.
Kent also highlighted ED’s partnership with the Social Security Administration, noting that through real-time data sharing with the agency, ED has prevented $1 billion from going to fraudsters, which is half of the $2 billion total saved.
“It has never been more important to safeguard federal and state resources, especially at a time when the Pell Grant program is running at a shortfall,” Kent said. “At the end of the day, every dollar lost to fraud is a dollar taken away from a student trying to build a better future.”
In his keynote address, Kent mentioned several specific instances where the Office of Inspector General (OIG) stopped student fraud rings in North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Following Kent’s address were two discussions led by staff in FSA and ED. Aaron Lemon-Strauss, executive director of the FAFSA program at FSA, detailed the new fraud-detection measures in the FAFSA form to attendees.
Addressing concerns that potential non-fraudulent students may be caught up in these new fraud detection measures, Lemon-Strauss noted that institutions can override a fraud determination if they verify the student’s identity.
Lemon-Strauss noted that FSA is “comfortable” with the rate of institutional overrides, and that the agency has not seen any institutions overriding beyond what FSA might expect.
From there, Lemon-Strauss went through several example scenarios that institutions may face under the new fraud prevention measures and answered questions from attendees.
Specifically, Lemon-Strauss was asked how long an applicant’s risk score is good for. Is that applicant’s risk score only good for that aid year, or are they going to be expected to resubmit to that ID verification process with every subsequent submission?
Lemon-Strauss said FSA does not want to force someone whose identity has been confirmed to reconfirm it. But he added that if enough time has passed and FSA still has concerns about fraud, FSA will need to verify the applicant's identity.
Another attendee noted that institutions have to verify students annually and often end up with many students in the same V4/V5 selection. Is there a plan for institutions that verify in person to flag these students so they don't have to re-verify?
Lemon-Strauss said FSA is working to significantly reduce the amount of V4/V5 verification and aims to bring the V4/V5 rate “to basically zero.”
Another attendee asked: if an institution determines that something is fraudulent but FSA is unaware of it, is there a way for that institution to report it both to warn other institutions and to improve FSA’s prevention measures? Lemon-Strauss said for now, institutions should report fraudulent activity to ED’s OIG.
ED’s Deputy Under Secretary James Bergeron led a session focused on the highest-risk areas for fraud in federal student aid programs and the work ED is doing to prevent it. Bergeron noted that, beyond the FAFSA fraud prevention measures, the department has done a lot of work on post-screening of student aid records. Additionally, he noted that ED is interested in examining ways to prevent fraud in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program.
“Our entire purpose here is to ensure that the federal funding that we're entrusted to administer actually goes to students, families, and borrowers who it is intended,” Bergeron said. “We really do see this as kind of a partnership.”
Tuesday’s summit continued with sessions from ED’s OIG, higher education institutions, industry partners, and more.
Publication Date: 7/8/2026
Jennifer B | 7/8/2026 9:17:08 AM
I wanted to share some feedback regarding the virtual experience. Unfortunately, those of us who logged in virtually could not actually hear the conversation. Attendees were not auto-muted at the start, which caused a lot of disruptive background noise, and the speaker's microphone was largely inaudible. I hope these technical issues can be addressed for future events.
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