[Oacrao-l] Fraudulent applications increasing

[Keila Manos]

Adam,

We are experiencing it, too. We are handling it in house and it's a very
manual process. Our admissions staff look closely for conflicting or
suspicious information and if it appears at all questionable, we put a hold
on the account and send an email requesting an identity verification via
Zoom. That has stopped a lot of it. We'll sometimes get an email or
phone call back stating that they are in an area where they don't have
great internet access so they can't do a Zoom call so could they just
verify via email and when we respond that we need to do a face and ID
verification, we never hear from them again.

We've also started asking faculty to include a minimal identity
verification assignment in online courses that students must complete
before moving on to the rest of the course. We ask that they have the
student do a video or photo of themselves showing their face and a photo
ID. It's done during the first week of class so that we can identify
potential FA fraud. Those fraudulent students will often disappear and then
are reported for non-attendance before we disburse aid and then we can also
put the identity verification hold on preventing additional registration.

It's not perfect and some still get through, but we do catch a lot this
way. I'm sure they will continue to get better at it, unfortunately.

Keila

[image: Western Oklahoma State College Logo] <https://www.wosc.edu/>Keila
Manos*, Ph.D.*
Vice President of Student Affairs
Western Oklahoma State College <https://www.wosc.edu/>
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On Thu, Feb 26, 2026 at 9:52 AM Johnson, Adam <adam.johnson at swosu.edu>
wrote:

> Good morning!
>
>
>
> SWOSU has seen a growing number of fraudulent applications come through in
> the past several months. While others were easier to spot/track, they are
> becoming increasingly more difficult to identify. In a recent example,
> the fraudulent applicant used someone else’s identity to gain admission
> (and Financial Aid), and someone is actually submitting assignments in
> their enrolled courses (asynchronous fully online).
>
>
>
> Here’s my question for you all - what are you doing to help prevent these
> kinds of fraudulent applications coming through? Are you using some kind of
> in-house process to verify every student’s identity or partnering with an
> outside vendor? If in-house, is the process in your Admissions area or
> Financial Aid office (or both/other)?
>
>
>
> Thank you for your insight!
>
>
>
> [image: created with MySignature.io]
> <https://mysignature.io/?utm_source=logo>
>
> Dr. Adam Johnson
>
> Vice-President for Student Services
>
> Office of Student Services
>
> p:  *580-774-3 <580-774-3063>177*
>
> f:   *580-774-7035*
>
> w:  *swosu.edu <https://www.swosu.edu/>*
>
> e:   *adam.johnson at swosu.edu <adam.johnson at swosu.edu>*
>
>
>
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