South Park Runs FULL FRONTAL Of Trump In Gross Parody After $1.5B Paramount Deal | Timcast IRL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF7UQg8jm-8
What's up with the correlation of tech legends being homosexuals? Even going back to Turing.
United Healthcare is facing DOJ investigation over Medicare fraud
-UnitedHealth Group revealed it is facing Justice Department criminal and civil investigations over its Medicare billing practices, adding to a string of setbacks for a company that owns America’s largest and most powerful private insurer.
-UnitedHealth also said it has launched a third-party review of its business policies and performance metrics.
-It comes after a tumultuous last year for UnitedHealthcare, the nation’s largest and most powerful private health insurer.
UnitedHealth Group
revealed Thursday it is facing Department of Justice investigations over its Medicare billing practices, adding to a string of setbacks for a company that owns the nation’s largest and most powerful private insurer.
In a securities filing, the company said that it has started complying with formal criminal and civil requests from the DOJ, and that it reached out to the department after reports of the probes surfaced. UnitedHealth also said it has launched a third-party review of its business policies and performance metrics.
The company told CNBC that it expects to complete that review toward the end of the third quarter.
In the filing, UnitedHealth said it “has full confidence in its practices and is committed to working cooperatively with the Department throughout this process.”
UnitedHealth Group shares dropped around 2% on Thursday. The company’s executives will likely face questions about the probe during its second-quarter earnings call on July 29.
Jared Holz, Mizuho Securities health-care strategist, said in an email to clients on Thursday that the announcement is “not shocking,” but noted that the company previously denied DOJ investigation claims. He said UnitedHealth’s decision to admit to the probes and cooperate with the department “all sounds logical as it moves forward with a new CEO.”
The company announced the abrupt departure of former CEO Andrew Witty in May.
UnitedHealth’s announcement on Thursday comes after The Wall Street Journal reported in May that the Department of Justice is conducting a criminal investigation into the health-care giant over possible Medicare fraud. In response at the time, the company said it stands “by the integrity of our Medicare Advantage program.”
In July, the Journal also reported that the DOJ interviewed several doctors about UnitedHealth’s practices and whether they felt pressured to submit claims for certain conditions that bolstered payments from the Medicare Advantage program to the company.
That marked the second time this year that the insurer’s Medicare Advantage business has come under federal scrutiny. The Journal also reported in February that the DOJ is conducting a civil investigation into whether the company inflated diagnoses to trigger extra payments to its Medicare Advantage plans.
But on Thursday, UnitedHealth said independent audits by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services “confirm” that the company’s practices are “among the most accurate in the industry.”
UnitedHealth also pointed to a special master’s recommendation in March in favor of the company in a yearslong legal battle with the DOJ that began with a whistleblower who alleged the company illegally withheld at least $2 billion through the Medicare Advantage program. The special master assigned to the case by a judge said the DOJ lacked evidence.
UnitedHealthcare’s Medicare and retirement segment, which includes the Medicare Advantage business, is UnitedHealth Group’s largest revenue driver, raking in $139 billion in sales last year.
The update in the probe comes after a tumultuous last year for UnitedHealthcare. Shares of UnitedHealthcare’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group
, are down more than 42% for the year after it suspended its 2025 forecast amid skyrocketing medical costs, announced the surprise exit of Witty and grappled with the reported probes into its Medicare Advantage business.
The company’s 2024 wasn’t any easier, marked by a historic cyberattack and the torrent of public blowback after the murder of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, Brian Thompson.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/24/unitedhealthcare-doj-investigation-medicare-billing.html
Supreme Court sides with Trump administration in battle over ability to remove agency commissioners
The Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the way for the Trump administration to remove three of the five members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission from office while their challenges to their firings continue.
In a brief unsigned order, the justices blocked, at least for now, a ruling by a federal judge in Maryland that had directed the Trump administration to reinstate the three commissioners, who were appointed by then-President Joe Biden. The majority explained that the case was “squarely controlled” by its May 22 ruling that allowed Trump to remove board members of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merits Systems Protection Board.
Justice Elena Kagan dissented, in an opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “By allowing the President to remove Commissioners for no reason other than their party affiliation,” Kagan contended, “the majority has negated Congress’s choice of agency bipartisanship and independence.”
The dispute began in early May, when the three commissioners – Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric, and Richard Trumka – were notified that they had been fired from their positions. Under the laws creating the CPSC, a commissioner can only be removed by the president “for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”
Boyle, Hoehn-Saric, and Trumka went to federal court, where they argued that the Trump administration’s attempt to fire them without cause violated the law.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Maddox agreed and issued an order requiring the Trump administration to reinstate the three commissioners. He relied on the Supreme Court’s 1935 decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, in which the justices ruled that although the president can normally fire subordinates for any reason, Congress can create independent, multi-member regulatory agencies with commissioners who can only be removed for cause. That ruling, Maddox emphasized, not only “remains good law and is binding on” district judges, but, he concluded, it also applies to the CPSC.
After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit declined to put Maddox’s order on hold, the Trump administration came to the Supreme Court on July 2, asking the justices to intervene. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer pointed to an order issued by the court in late May that had allowed the president to remove members of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board while their challenges to their firings move forward. That order, Sauer contended, “squarely controls” the commissioners’ case. By ordering the reinstatement of the three commissioners, Sauer argued, Maddox “has sown chaos and dysfunction” at the CPSC, warranting the court’s “immediate intervention.”
In a filing on July 11, the commissioners urged the justices to leave Maddox’s order in place – and allow them to remain in their jobs. Doing so, they told the court, would preserve the status quo, because they have been back at work since June 13; before that, they added, they served for four months without any complaints before the Trump administration attempted to fire them.
Boyle, Hoehn-Saric, and Trumka also echoed Maddox’s conclusion that the “structure and function” of the CPSC “‘closely resemble[]’ those of the agency described in Humphrey’s Executor and that the CPSC’s statutory tenure protections, like those upheld in Humphrey’s Executor, are accordingly constitutional.”
On Wednesday afternoon, the majority granted the Trump administration’s request to pause Maddox’s order while litigation continues. The court’s brief order acknowledged that Trump v. Wilcox, its ruling in the case of the MSPB and NLRB board members, was only an “interim” ruling that was “not conclusive as to the merits” of the dispute. However, it continued, such interim orders nonetheless “inform how a court should exercise its” discretion in similar cases.
The decision to grant the Trump administration’s request to be able to fire the MSPB and NLRB board members, the majority explained, “reflected ‘our judgment that the Government faces greater risk of harm from an order allowing a removed officer to continue exercising the executive power than a wrongfully removed officer faces from being unable to perform her statutory duty.’” That reasoning applies equally to the CPSC commissioners, the majority wrote, when the CPSC “exercises executive power in a similar manner as the” NLRB, “and the case does not otherwise differ from Wilcox in any pertinent respect.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed with the decision to pause Maddox’s ruling, and he added that he would have gone ahead and granted review in Wilcox without waiting for the court of appeals to weigh in. “When an emergency application turns on whether this Court will narrow or overrule a precedent,” he said, “and there is at least a fair prospect (not certainty, but at least some reasonable prospect) that we will do so, the better practice often may be to both grant a stay and grant certiorari before judgment.”
In her dissent, Kagan decried what she characterized as the court’s repeated use of the emergency docket “to destroy the independence of an independent agency, as established by Congress.” She suggested that the court had “all but overturned Humphrey’s Executor,” and she stated that these actions have occurred “with the scantiest of explanations.” “By means of such actions,” she concluded, “this Court may facilitate the permanent transfer of authority, piece by piece by piece, from one branch of Government to another.”
https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/07/supreme-court-sides-with-trump-administration-in-battle-over-cpsc-commissioners/
Scalise: House ‘will deal with’ Epstein issues after August recess if needed
The majority leader said in an interview that the House is waiting on the Trump administration to work on releasing Epstein-related grand jury information through the courts.
Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Wednesday that House Republicans will address remaining issues around the Jeffrey Epstein case after lawmakers return from recess in September, if more information doesn’t come out first.
Scalise said in an interview that the House is waiting on the Trump administration to work on releasing Epstein-related grand jury information through the courts over the August recess.
“We’ll see what comes out of the courts, none of us can predict that,” Scalise said. “But when we return, we’ll deal with whatever’s left.”
He noted House GOP leaders and rank-and-file Republicans are “hopeful” the Trump administration will facilitate the release of more Epstein-related information before lawmakers return. GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky is pushing a discharge petition to force a vote on his bipartisan bill to compel the release of more Epstein documents. That effort will be ready for a vote in September.
“If the courts have already released a lot of those, then I think that will be helpful. But we’ve been clear we want to get the information out there, but also protect the victims,” Scalise said.
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/07/23/congress/scalise-epstein-house-republicans-00471136
USDA reorganization will move most of its Washington staff ‘closer to’ farmers
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is closing several D.C.-area buildings but notably will not pursue a large-scale reduction in force.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Thursday announced a long-awaited reorganization plan to transfer most of the Washington-area staff to five locations around the country and close a number of key USDA offices in the capital region.
Rollins, speaking in a video message to employees, said USDA will move people to Salt Lake City; Fort Collins, Colorado; Indianapolis; Kansas City, Missouri; and Raleigh, North Carolina. Staff will receive notice about their new assignments in the coming months.
The department will close nearly all of its Washington-area buildings as a result, with the exception of the Whitten and Yates buildings, which are located directly on the National Mall. That includes the South building of USDA’s headquarters, the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, the George Washington Carver Center and a Food and Nutrition Services facility in Alexandria, Virginia, that has recently had major workplace hazards.
However, there will be no large-scale reductions in force, given that the department has already seen an exodus of 15,364 employees through the administration’s deferred resignation plan, Rollins said.
“This reorganization already recognizes that many USDA employees provide critical frontline services in locations all across our great country that cannot be disrupted,” she added.
Rollins’ move is the latest in a round of shakeups to the federal workforce enacted by the Trump administration as it seeks to dramatically slash what it sees as excess spending and a bloated bureaucracy. The USDA plan, which POLITICO first reported earlier Thursday, comes after the Supreme Court earlier this month allowed agencies to move forward with their reorganization and staff reduction goals, overturning a lower-court stay initially blocking the implementation.
More than 90 percent of the department’s nearly 100,000 employees are already based outside the beltway in county and regional offices, including at regional research facilities, farm loan offices and conservation facilities.
Rollins said this latest plan to relocate even more employees will help USDA better serve its “core constituents” of farmers, ranchers and U.S. producers.
The secretary, in a follow-up press release, also said the move is a cost-saving one. USDA expects to move more than half of its 4,600-person Washington staff, allowing the department to cut workers’ pay: The D.C. region has a nearly 34 percent federal salary locality rate, which increases salaries based on the cost of living, compared to 17 percent in Salt Lake City, for example.
“While this is a strategic and long term decision for USDA, I know that for you, this is an immediate and potentially major change,” Rollins told employees in the video message. “I know that your primary concern at this moment is for you, your families and your colleagues, I want you all to know that this decision was not entered into lightly.”
Congressional Republicans, weeks before the announcement, were clamoring to bring USDA workers and offices to their districts.
But several USDA staffers told POLITICO that the move will further hurt morale.
“This administration [isn’t] interested in supporting staff or even really in the jobs we do,” said one employee granted anonymity in order to speak publicly without fear of repercussions. “If they cared about either of those things, if they cared about serving farmers and ranchers, they wouldn’t have taken away all the staff, tools, and resources we use to serve them.”
A second employee, also granted anonymity to speak candidly, warned that relocating staff out of the Washington area would make oversight more difficult.
“[This] is just going to create an inner circle of powerful employees with access to people in high places and send everyone else out to ‘hubs,’” they said. “They are concentrating power and want fewer witnesses to what they are doing.”
The second employee suggested that moving would be costly for employees and for USDA, and it could force some workers to make the difficult choice to quit.
The first Trump administration moved USDA’s Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture to Kansas City, Missouri, triggering an exodus of staff. That relocation was later reversed by the Biden administration.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/24/usda-rollins-announces-reorganization-relocate-employees-00473539
Alabama: Young children held captive in underground bunker as sex slaves
Appalling photos have revealed the Alabama storm shelter where at least 10 children, some as young as 3 years old, were held captive and sexually tortured for years as part of a sex-trafficking ring organized by some of their own relatives.
Bibb County Sheriff Jody Wade said during a press conference Wednesday that 10 victims have been identified, but warned that both the number of victims and arrests would likely increase.
"I've been in law enforcement for 33 years, and this is absolutely the most horrible thing I've ever seen when it comes to the victimization of children,” Wade said. “I know God's forgiveness is boundless, but if there was a limit to it, I think we've reached it.”
Seven suspects, including two mothers and several other relatives of the victims, have been arrested so far for their role in the alleged ring, authorities said.
William Chase EcElroy, 21, Dalton Terrell, 21, Andres Velazquez-Trejo, 29, Timothy St. John, 23, Ricky Terrell, 44, Sara Louise Terrell, 41, and Rebecca Brewer, 29, all face an array of charges, ranging from rape and sodomy to kidnapping and human trafficking.
A shocking photo shared by authorities revealed the squalid conditions inside the concrete bunker where the horrifying abuse transpired for years, with authorities saying they believe it began around 2022.
Inside the cold, concrete shelter was little furniture, consisting of just an old, dingy bed, several chairs and other small pieces of furniture.
Throughout the abuse, the children would allegedly be tied up, often to the limited pieces of furniture, and forced to perform sexual acts, Bibb County Assistant District Attorney Bryan Jones said.
The children were also allegedly drugged by Velazquez-Trejo, who put some kind of white powder into their drinks that would make them drowsy, authorities said.
“It’s hard to hear their stories and it’s hard to see pictures of this bunker where, according to some of the witnesses, they were drugged,” Jones said.
“As bad as it sounds with (Velazques-Trejo) drugging them, it may be a blessing in disguise because they don’t remember a lot of things,” Jones said.
“I’m hopeful that they won’t have near the trauma they would have had if they had not been drugged.”
One of the mothers reportedly involved in the abuse, Sara Louise Terrell, would allegedly put animal shock collars on the victims, which the suspects would also use on the children’s genitals, according to The New York Post.
The investigation into the abuse began earlier this year on Feb. 4, when authorities were called to the shelter and found two of the victims performing sexual acts on each other, Jones said.
The victims told authorities they were performing what McElroy had done to them or taught them to do, Jones said.
Authorities allege the children, who were between the ages of 3 and 16, were forced to endure vaginal intercourse, anal intercourse and oral sex.
Records obtained by AL.com also showed that one of the suspects allegedly “sold” children “to various clientele for sexual pleasure.” Each suspect reportedly had a specific role in the alleged ring.
Authorities believe their investigation will yield more victims and even more suspects. Jones said there are allegations of up to another 12 men who may have paid to have sex with the children.
“We have no way of identifying these people unless somebody in the community comes forward and says this person told us they did this,” Jones said.
“The children wouldn’t know who they are,” he said, referring to the victims being drugged.
The victims included Sara Louise Terrell’s children and Velazquez-Trejo and Brewer’s children, authorities said. It was not immediately clear how many children from each suspect was involved in the abuse.
Authorities said all three Terrells charged are related to each other, though it was not immediately clear how.
Wade said that “there’s no telling” how many additional victims they may find, noting it seemed as though what they’d uncovered was “just the tip of the iceberg.” Bibb County officials are investigating alongside the Department of Homeland Security.
Authorities are also probing the suspects’ potential affiliations with the Mexican gang Seranos, which largely makes money through child sex trafficking.
The victims are all in the custody of the Alabama Department of Human Resources.
The suspects, who all lived in mobile homes within a mile of each other in the small town of Brent, will be arraigned in August.
The investigation is ongoing.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/inside-room-where-adults-accused-140534245.html
1.2 million fake students applied to California community colleges last year
-Financial aid fraud has been on the rise in California’s community colleges.
-Scammers stole roughly $8.4 million in federal financial aid and more than $2.7 million in state aid in 2024.
California community college officials are working to overcome a serious predicament involving hundreds of thousands of fake students and hefty financial aid losses.
It’s possible this multimillion-dollar problem could be solved, in part, with a $10 fee.
At a meeting last month of the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges, officials discussed a proposal to charge prospective students a $10 application fee — applying to one of the state’s 116 community colleges has historically been free.
As officials prepare to put into place measures to prevent fraud, the charge is one more possible way to weed out those who are gaming the system to steal millions in financial aid dollars. At the May 20 meeting, the proposal seeking approval to explore the implementation of a “nominal” application fee was met with lengthy and spirited debate — with some fearing the fee would be seen as an obstacle for new students, many of whom are low-income.
But the severity and volume of the fraud have caused the chancellor’s office to consider the charge, which would represent a fundamental change from the system’s open-access model.
''How are fraudsters scamming the system?''
Of those who applied to state community colleges from January through December 2024, 31% were determined to be likely fraudulent. That’s more than 1.2 million applications, according to data from the office of the chancellor for the college system.
Anyone who applies to a California community college is admitted. This accessibility, coupled with the increase in remote and hybrid formats for classes since the COVID-19 pandemic, creates vulnerabilities that scammers exploit to cash in on both state and federal financial aid.
Fraudsters, with the help of stolen identities, bots and artificial intelligence, act as dozens or even hundreds of students. They join classes and remain enrolled until they receive their financial aid checks. The fake students often take up limited spots in classes actual students need to take, creating headaches for both students and staff.
Although any financial aid goes toward tuition first, low-income community college students pay little or no tuition in California, meaning they receive funds directly to use for books, housing, food or other needs while they’re in school.
Some fraudsters have spent that cash on plastic surgery, elaborate vacations and designer bags, federal officials say.
''How much aid is going to fake students?''
The state’s community colleges have seen a steady increase in fraudulent applications and enrollment in recent years. In 2022, The Times reported that 20% of recent traffic on the main portal for online applications was malicious and bot-related, meaning that by early 2025 — in less than three years — such traffic jumped by more than 10%.
Although 31% of applicants were deemed likely fraudulent last year, that doesn’t mean 31% of students in the community college system are fake, noted John Hetts, the executive vice chancellor for research, analytics and data for California Community Colleges.
Hetts emphasized to The Times earlier this year that those fraudulent applicants were detected and then shut out of the system, preventing them from enrolling and stealing financial aid.
Officials said individual campuses’ improvements in detecting fraud had increased the percentage of fake applications that were stopped — but there have also been more attempts.
The around 30% of applicants that were probably fake in 2024 represent about 85% of fraudulent attempts, according to Chris Ferguson, the executive vice chancellor of finance and strategic initiatives, who spoke at last month’s Board of Governors meeting.
Data from the chancellor’s office show that about $8.4 million in federal aid and $2.7 million in state aid were stolen by scammers in 2024.
That’s only a “very, very small percentage” of total aid that’s disbursed at California’s community colleges, according to officials from the chancellor’s office. In 2024 through 2025 to date, students received roughly $2 billion in total aid from all federal sources, including loans and Pell Grants, and about $1.5 billion in state aid, the officials said.
From January through mid-April of this year, $4 million in federal aid and more than $760,000 in state aid have been disbursed and written off as fraud by California community colleges, according to chancellor’s office data.
With more than 2.1 million students who collectively receive billions in aid, Hetts said his office was “fairly proud” of its record.
“We can absolutely get better. There’s no question. Any dollar we lose, we don’t want to lose that dollar, but we are fighting really hard,” he said, and the “vast majority of attempts” are stopped.
''What’s being done to stop the scams?''
Officials at the chancellor’s office said they couldn’t share the specific mitigating measures they had put into place to detect and prevent application, enrollment and financial aid fraud, but they said they were undertaking a “complete redesign” of the application system.
The new system, which they hope to roll out by spring semester 2026, will have integrated fraud detection tools. Ferguson said if fraudsters are stopped at the application stage, it would have a “downstream impact” of preventing enrollment and financial aid fraud.
Jason Williams, an assistant inspector general at the Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General, said financial aid fraud is not a new phenomenon; neither is it exclusive to California. His office investigates fraud rings across the country that specifically target community colleges for their lower tuition costs, which means scammers can collect a larger chunk of leftover financial aid dollars compared to a more expensive school.
But “as we change and close loopholes, they find new ones,” Williams said. “We have to make sure that we’re evolving with the fraud and make sure we’re keeping up with what’s going on so we can continue to be effective.”
Williams said the fight against fraud could become more challenging as the Trump administration attempts to dismantle the Education Department. Mass layoffs at the department were blocked in May by a federal judge. The Trump administration then asked the Supreme Court earlier this month to leave the layoffs in place.
The department’s Office of Inspector General has not been affected by layoffs, but it has lost about 20% of its workforce since the beginning of the fiscal year last fall due to deferred resignations and voluntary buyout programs that were offered to all federal employees when Trump took office, officials said.
That decrease in staffing is having a noticeable impact, Williams said, especially as the federal hiring freeze is preventing the team from filling crucial roles.
Amid the layoff turmoil, the workload will likely increase for the department as it institutes a new procedure to combat fraud.
The Education Department announced earlier this month it’s implementing a new rule that would require financial aid applicants to present, either in person or in a live video conference, an unexpired, valid, government-issued photo identification to their school, and the school must preserve a copy. The change will go into effect in the fall, and in the interim, colleges will have to validate the identity of certain first-time applicants who are enrolled in the summer term.
“When rampant fraud is taking aid away from eligible students, disrupting the operations of colleges, and ripping off taxpayers, we have a responsibility to act,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a news release announcing the change.
As for the creation of a $10 application fee at California’s community colleges to combat fraud, it’s a “potential consideration and not a foregone conclusion” for now, a spokesperson for the chancellor’s office told The Times. Any new fee must be authorized by state statute.
Staff at the chancellor’s office said they are not trying to create an obstacle for hopeful students, just hoping to put up an additional barrier for fraudsters.
The fee is not being discussed as a potential revenue source, and officials said it could potentially be waived, refunded or credited to students with demonstrated financial hardship.
There was “great deliberation” over the fee at the May board meeting, said Jory Hadsell, an executive at the chancellor’s office focused on strategic technology initiatives, “but also a sense that we need to move with urgency to safeguard the access for all of our students.”
The system now works with the IT security company ID.me to help verify identities of applicants. But at the individual college level, staff and faculty have become familiar with the process of determining whether their students are real by checking for “authentic engagement” in classes, according to Hetts from the chancellor’s office.
They’re also more familiar with some of the tricks fraudsters try to pull. One person attempting to enroll in the L.A. Community College District came to an in-person meeting to verify their identity and presented a California driver’s license with the weight listed in kilograms, said Nicole Albo-Lopez, the deputy chancellor of LACCD.
Examples like this remind her that although the students in these schemes — filling up classrooms and stealing taxpayer dollars — are not real, the people behind the scams are.
“This isn’t just a computer or a robot out there,” Albo-Lopez said. “These are real people that are committing these crimes, and technology has been weaponized to attack other sectors. Higher education just happens to be the one they’re focused on right now.”
https://archive.is/GxL6J#selection-3115.0-3151.259
1.2 million fake students applied to California community colleges last year
-Financial aid fraud has been on the rise in California’s community colleges.
-Scammers stole roughly $8.4 million in federal financial aid and more than $2.7 million in state aid in 2024.
California community college officials are working to overcome a serious predicament involving hundreds of thousands of fake students and hefty financial aid losses.
It’s possible this multimillion-dollar problem could be solved, in part, with a $10 fee.
At a meeting last month of the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges, officials discussed a proposal to charge prospective students a $10 application fee — applying to one of the state’s 116 community colleges has historically been free.
As officials prepare to put into place measures to prevent fraud, the charge is one more possible way to weed out those who are gaming the system to steal millions in financial aid dollars. At the May 20 meeting, the proposal seeking approval to explore the implementation of a “nominal” application fee was met with lengthy and spirited debate — with some fearing the fee would be seen as an obstacle for new students, many of whom are low-income.
But the severity and volume of the fraud have caused the chancellor’s office to consider the charge, which would represent a fundamental change from the system’s open-access model.
''How are fraudsters scamming the system?''
Of those who applied to state community colleges from January through December 2024, 31% were determined to be likely fraudulent. That’s more than 1.2 million applications, according to data from the office of the chancellor for the college system.
Anyone who applies to a California community college is admitted. This accessibility, coupled with the increase in remote and hybrid formats for classes since the COVID-19 pandemic, creates vulnerabilities that scammers exploit to cash in on both state and federal financial aid.
Fraudsters, with the help of stolen identities, bots and artificial intelligence, act as dozens or even hundreds of students. They join classes and remain enrolled until they receive their financial aid checks. The fake students often take up limited spots in classes actual students need to take, creating headaches for both students and staff.
Although any financial aid goes toward tuition first, low-income community college students pay little or no tuition in California, meaning they receive funds directly to use for books, housing, food or other needs while they’re in school.
Some fraudsters have spent that cash on plastic surgery, elaborate vacations and designer bags, federal officials say.
''How much aid is going to fake students?''
The state’s community colleges have seen a steady increase in fraudulent applications and enrollment in recent years. In 2022, The Times reported that 20% of recent traffic on the main portal for online applications was malicious and bot-related, meaning that by early 2025 — in less than three years — such traffic jumped by more than 10%.
Although 31% of applicants were deemed likely fraudulent last year, that doesn’t mean 31% of students in the community college system are fake, noted John Hetts, the executive vice chancellor for research, analytics and data for California Community Colleges.
Hetts emphasized to The Times earlier this year that those fraudulent applicants were detected and then shut out of the system, preventing them from enrolling and stealing financial aid.
Officials said individual campuses’ improvements in detecting fraud had increased the percentage of fake applications that were stopped — but there have also been more attempts.
The around 30% of applicants that were probably fake in 2024 represent about 85% of fraudulent attempts, according to Chris Ferguson, the executive vice chancellor of finance and strategic initiatives, who spoke at last month’s Board of Governors meeting.
Data from the chancellor’s office show that about $8.4 million in federal aid and $2.7 million in state aid were stolen by scammers in 2024.
That’s only a “very, very small percentage” of total aid that’s disbursed at California’s community colleges, according to officials from the chancellor’s office. In 2024 through 2025 to date, students received roughly $2 billion in total aid from all federal sources, including loans and Pell Grants, and about $1.5 billion in state aid, the officials said.
From January through mid-April of this year, $4 million in federal aid and more than $760,000 in state aid have been disbursed and written off as fraud by California community colleges, according to chancellor’s office data.
With more than 2.1 million students who collectively receive billions in aid, Hetts said his office was “fairly proud” of its record.
“We can absolutely get better. There’s no question. Any dollar we lose, we don’t want to lose that dollar, but we are fighting really hard,” he said, and the “vast majority of attempts” are stopped.
''What’s being done to stop the scams?''
Officials at the chancellor’s office said they couldn’t share the specific mitigating measures they had put into place to detect and prevent application, enrollment and financial aid fraud, but they said they were undertaking a “complete redesign” of the application system.
The new system, which they hope to roll out by spring semester 2026, will have integrated fraud detection tools. Ferguson said if fraudsters are stopped at the application stage, it would have a “downstream impact” of preventing enrollment and financial aid fraud.
Jason Williams, an assistant inspector general at the Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General, said financial aid fraud is not a new phenomenon; neither is it exclusive to California. His office investigates fraud rings across the country that specifically target community colleges for their lower tuition costs, which means scammers can collect a larger chunk of leftover financial aid dollars compared to a more expensive school.
But “as we change and close loopholes, they find new ones,” Williams said. “We have to make sure that we’re evolving with the fraud and make sure we’re keeping up with what’s going on so we can continue to be effective.”
Williams said the fight against fraud could become more challenging as the Trump administration attempts to dismantle the Education Department. Mass layoffs at the department were blocked in May by a federal judge. The Trump administration then asked the Supreme Court earlier this month to leave the layoffs in place.
The department’s Office of Inspector General has not been affected by layoffs, but it has lost about 20% of its workforce since the beginning of the fiscal year last fall due to deferred resignations and voluntary buyout programs that were offered to all federal employees when Trump took office, officials said.
That decrease in staffing is having a noticeable impact, Williams said, especially as the federal hiring freeze is preventing the team from filling crucial roles.
Amid the layoff turmoil, the workload will likely increase for the department as it institutes a new procedure to combat fraud.
The Education Department announced earlier this month it’s implementing a new rule that would require financial aid applicants to present, either in person or in a live video conference, an unexpired, valid, government-issued photo identification to their school, and the school must preserve a copy. The change will go into effect in the fall, and in the interim, colleges will have to validate the identity of certain first-time applicants who are enrolled in the summer term.
“When rampant fraud is taking aid away from eligible students, disrupting the operations of colleges, and ripping off taxpayers, we have a responsibility to act,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a news release announcing the change.
As for the creation of a $10 application fee at California’s community colleges to combat fraud, it’s a “potential consideration and not a foregone conclusion” for now, a spokesperson for the chancellor’s office told The Times. Any new fee must be authorized by state statute.
Staff at the chancellor’s office said they are not trying to create an obstacle for hopeful students, just hoping to put up an additional barrier for fraudsters.
The fee is not being discussed as a potential revenue source, and officials said it could potentially be waived, refunded or credited to students with demonstrated financial hardship.
There was “great deliberation” over the fee at the May board meeting, said Jory Hadsell, an executive at the chancellor’s office focused on strategic technology initiatives, “but also a sense that we need to move with urgency to safeguard the access for all of our students.”
The system now works with the IT security company ID.me to help verify identities of applicants. But at the individual college level, staff and faculty have become familiar with the process of determining whether their students are real by checking for “authentic engagement” in classes, according to Hetts from the chancellor’s office.
They’re also more familiar with some of the tricks fraudsters try to pull. One person attempting to enroll in the L.A. Community College District came to an in-person meeting to verify their identity and presented a California driver’s license with the weight listed in kilograms, said Nicole Albo-Lopez, the deputy chancellor of LACCD.
Examples like this remind her that although the students in these schemes — filling up classrooms and stealing taxpayer dollars — are not real, the people behind the scams are.
“This isn’t just a computer or a robot out there,” Albo-Lopez said. “These are real people that are committing these crimes, and technology has been weaponized to attack other sectors. Higher education just happens to be the one they’re focused on right now.”
https://archive.is/GxL6J#selection-3115.0-3151.259
AI expert calls for financial aid overhaul after bots steal at least $13M in California
Over 30 percent of applications found likely fraudulent.
Higher education will need to rework its financial aid system to stop scammers from using artificial intelligence bots to steal millions of taxpayer dollars each year, an AI expert told The College Fix.
Alliance for Secure AI spokesperson Peyton Hornberger made this comment in response to recent reports that scammers used AI-generated bots to steal more than $13 million in federal and state financial aid from California Community Colleges over the course of one year.
In 2024 alone, scammers stole about $8.4 million in federal financial aid and more than $2.7 million in aid from the state, according to The Los Angeles Times.
These scam bots, generated by AI and known formally as “Pell runners,” fraudulently enroll in community colleges as students. They submit the required assignments, which are typically AI-generated, apply for the federal Pell Grant, collect up to $7,400 at a time, and then leave without a trace, CalMatters reported.
“Within California’s system of 116 community colleges, 31% of applications last year – or 1.2 million – were found to be likely fraudulent, according to data from the office of the chancellor for the college system,” Just The News reported.
Hornberger told The Fix AI bots make this kind of fraud easier and more effective than ever before. “Any new technology exposes the gaps in our social fabric, and AI is no different,” Hornberger said.
She also said the public’s understanding of AI is very superficial, with little knowledge of its profound societal impact.
Not enough people are aware of the issue, “and the system itself needs to be reworked to accommodate for malicious actors who are using AI negatively,” she said.
“The AI revolution makes the current higher education model incompatible with rapidly advancing AI,” she said. “Our institutions are just not prepared.”
When asked about potential policy solutions, Hornberger said “banning deepfakes, certain technologies, and certain uses of AI is the tip of the iceberg.”
Transparency regarding this technology and its development labs is essential, she said, adding that “safety standards and testing reports should be mandatory public information.”
Moreover, the issue is escalating with the rise of online education and public AI language models like ChatGPT, CalMatters reported.
In 2021, a CalMatters investigation found that at least ten California districts or community colleges had “increases in fake applications, registrations, financial aid filings, or some combination of the three.”
The outlet also found that around 20 percent of community college applications in California were AI-generated in 2021. By January 2024, that amount went up to 25 percent. In April 2025, the number increased again to approximately 34 percent.
The College Fix reached out to California Community Colleges media relations via multiple emails for more information on how it plans to reduce this type of abuse. The Fix did not receive a response.
However, these scams are not isolated to California.
Reports from Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, and Nevada reveal that community college customer-relationship management administrators detect an AI-generated bot every seven minutes on average, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported.
Additionally, a recent investigation by the U.S. Department of Education “uncovered nearly $90 million disbursed to ineligible recipients, including thousands of deceased individuals receiving some form of payment,” according to a May news release.
In response to this finding, the department announced a new initiative to implement advanced identity validation processes nationwide for the upcoming fall semester, according to a June news release.
“When rampant fraud is taking aid away from eligible students, disrupting the operations of colleges, and ripping off taxpayers, we have a responsibility to act,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said.
https://www.thecollegefix.com/ai-expert-calls-for-financial-aid-overhaul-after-bots-steal-at-least-13m-in-california/
New Jersey man pleads guilty to leading $600 million catalytic converter theft ring
-A New Jersey man pleaded guilty in Oklahoma federal court to leading a theft ring that stole catalytic converters and sold them for more than $600 million to a refinery that extracted precious metals contained in the devices.
-Navin Khanna is the latest person to plead guilty in connection with the ring.
-Khanna said he sold converters to Dowa Metals & Mining, a subsidiary of Dowa Holdings, which is a component of the Nikkei 225 stock market index.
A New Jersey man pleaded guilty in Oklahoma federal court to leading a massive theft ring that stole catalytic converters from vehicles and sold them for more than $600 million in total to a refinery that extracted precious metals contained in the devices.
The defendant, Navin Khanna, is the latest person to plead guilty in connection with the ring, which was exposed after police in Tulsa, Oklahoma, discovered nearly 130 catalytic converters in the bed of a truck they stopped in May 2021, after an off-duty officer reported suspicions about the vehicle.
That stop came during a nationwide surge of thefts in catalytic converters, which are part of the exhaust systems of automobiles, and which contain precious metals including platinum, palladium and rhodium.
The Justice Department said that Khanna, 41, on Monday admitted to being the owner and operator of D.G. Auto Parts in New Jersey, and from May 2020 through October 2022, “he conspired with others to purchase and transport large quantities of stolen catalytic converters from Oklahoma, Texas, and other states to New Jersey.”
In a plea agreement filed in U.S. District Court in Tulsa, Khanna said, “After purchasing these catalytic converters, I resold most of them to Dowa Metals & Mining, a metal refinery, which would then extract the powdered precious metals.”
CNBC has requested comment from Dowa Metals, whose website says that its Burlington, New Jersey, facility “has played a key role in converter recycling in America since 2016.”
Dowa Metals is a subsidiary of Japan-based Dowa Holdings Co
., which is a component of the Nikkei 225 stock market index. The company has not been charged in connection with Khanna’s case.
Khanna pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to receive, possess, and dispose of stolen goods in interstate commerce and five counts of money laundering stemming from his participation in the stolen goods scheme.
The Holmdel, New Jersey, resident faces a maximum possible sentence of between 14 years and 17½ years in prison.
An attorney for Khanna did not immediately reply to a request for comment from CNBC.
As part of his plea agreement, Khanna agreed to surrender almost $4 million in cash and 11 luxury vehicles, among them “Lamborghini, two Mercedes AMGs, two Ferraris, a McLaren, a Porsche, a Ford F650 Truck, and a BMW M3,” the Justice Department said in a press release.
Authorities also seized “real estate properties, high-end jewelry, gold bars, and over 200 pallets of catalytic converters … during the execution of search warrants at Khanna’s properties,” said the DOJ.
“Khanna’s theft ring took advantage of hard-working citizens in the Northern District of Oklahoma by stealing catalytic converters, rendering the vehicle unusable,” Clint Johnson, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Oklahoma, said in a statement.
“I would like to thank the Tulsa Police Department and our law enforcement partners for their tireless efforts in bringing this senseless crime to justice,” said Johnson.
Thirteen other people have pleaded guilty to roles in the converter theft scheme and are awaiting sentencing, the Justice Department said.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/22/guilty-plea-catalytic-convertor-theft-cars.html
US Attorney Habba
@USAttyHabba
Donald J. Trump is the 47th President.
Pam Bondi is the Attorney General.
And I am now the Acting United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey.
I don’t cower to pressure. I don’t answer to politics.
This is a fight for justice. And I’m all in. 🇺🇸
https://x.com/USAttyHabba/status/1948489536507707793
Townhall.com
@townhallcom
🚨BUSTED:
@VanderbiltU
's Janet Roberts was CAUGHT ON CAMERA disparaging Sen. Marsha Blackburn and hiding the school's DEI practices.
"God help us…[
@MarshaBlackburn
's] ridiculous"
"We are heavily supported by federal funding…[so] we're not advertising diversity and inclusion lectures."
"We're flying under the radar…"
https://x.com/townhallcom/status/1948057680871886969
Trump administration greenlights Paramount's $8 billion merger with entertainment group Skydance
The deal opens the door to major changes at CBS News, with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr saying, "Americans no longer trust the legacy national news media to report fully, accurately, and fairly. It is time for a change."
Trump administration regulators have approved Skydance Media’s $8 billion bid to acquire CBS News parent company Paramount, paving the way for a tectonic shift in ownership of one of America’s three major networks.
The Federal Communications Commission said Thursday that it had approved the acquisition, with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr adding in a news release that the move would bring change to the company's news coverage. Paramount owns CBS, which includes CBS News.
"Americans no longer trust the legacy national news media to report fully, accurately, and fairly. It is time for a change," Carr said. "That is why I welcome Skydance’s commitment to make significant changes at the once storied CBS broadcast network. In particular, Skydance has made written commitments to ensure that the new company’s programming embodies a diversity of viewpoints from across the political and ideological spectrum."
"Today’s decision also marks another step forward in the FCC’s efforts to eliminate invidious forms of DEI discrimination," Carr added.
In recent days, Paramount's new owner made a number of concessions to the FCC, including agreeing to not implement any diversity, equity or inclusion programs. Skydance also said it would "undertake a comprehensive review" of CBS and "will commit, for a period of at least two years, to have in place an ombudsman." That role would report to the president of the new company.
A number of companies that have billion-dollar transactions pending before Carr's FCC have also backed off of DEI programs, including Verizon and T-Mobile.
The concessions also came after Paramount Global settled a lawsuit with President Donald Trump for $16 million. Trump brought that suit, saying the way CBS edited a "60 Minutes" interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris was "election and voter interference."
The lone Democrat in FCC leadership, Commissioner Anna Gomez, did not mince words about the push to secure promises from the companies.
“After months of cowardly capitulation to this Administration, Paramount finally got what it wanted," she said in an emailed statement.
"In an unprecedented move, this once-independent FCC used its vast power to pressure Paramount to broker a private legal settlement and further erode press freedom," she added. "Once again, this agency is undermining legitimate efforts to combat discrimination and expand opportunity by overstepping its authority and intervening in employment matters reserved for other government entities with proper jurisdiction on these issues."
"Even more alarming, it is now imposing never-before-seen controls over newsroom decisions and editorial judgment, in direct violation of the First Amendment and the law."
Skydance is run by David Ellison, son of Oracle founder and Trump ally Larry Ellison. While the younger Ellison made a donation to President Joe Biden’s re-election fund in February 2024 shortly before the former president bowed out of the race, Trump recently signaled his comfort with his takeover of Paramount and its assets, which in addition to CBS News include Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, The CW, MTV, BET and film franchises like “Smurfs” and “Sonic the Hedgehog.”
“Ellison is great. He’ll do a great job with it,” Trump said in June.
There is likely to be a sea change in the editorial direction of CBS News under its new ownership. In a recent filing, Ellison and Skydance said they’d told Carr that they were committed to pursuing a focus on “American storytelling” while touting a new, “unbiased” editorial direction for CBS News. Their meeting came shortly after Paramount agreed to settle Trump’s lawsuit.
It also came just days after CBS announced it was canceling “The Late Show,” currently hosted by Stephen Colbert — an announcement Trump praised on social media. Colbert had recently criticized the parent company’s multimillion-dollar settlement with Trump, while CBS said the cancellation was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.”
There had been signs of an editorial shift ahead of the merger. Most notably, longtime “60 Minutes” editor Bill Owens announced he was stepping down this spring, citing CBS News’ fading editorial independence. Shortly after, CBS News President and CEO Wendy McMahon was pushed out. Last week, The New York Times reported Skydance was in early talks to acquire the conservative-leaning The Free Press media outlet. Meanwhile, “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart has said he did not know whether his program would survive the merger.
Skydance has spent years pursuing Paramount and eventually realized it could successfully execute the transaction by purchasing Paramount’s parent, National Amusements, the company once helmed by Sumner Redstone, the father of the company’s current chairwoman, president and CEO, Shari Redstone. Yet the proposed deal continued to face hurdles, first under the Biden administration then at the outset of Trump’s term. Its approval came in what was its third deadline extension period.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/paramount-skydance-cbs-deal-what-to-know-rcna220006
Astronomer HR chief Kristin Cabot resigns following Coldplay ‘kiss cam’ incident
-Astronomer’s human resources chief Kristin Cabot has resigned from the company following an affair that was caught on camera at a Coldplay concert.
-The intimate moment between Cabot and CEO Andy Byron went viral on the internet after the two hid when Coldplay’s lead singer called them out during the concert.
-Both Byron and Chabot have now resigned from Astronomer and have been removed from the company’s leadership team webpage.
Days after Astronomer CEO Andy Byron resigned from the tech startup, the HR exec who was with him at the infamous Coldplay concert has left as well.
“Kristin Cabot is no longer with Astronomer, she has resigned,” a company spokesperson wrote in an email to CNBC Thursday. Cabot was the company’s chief people officer.
Cabot and Byron, who is married with children, were shown in an intimate moment on the ‘kiss cam’ at a recent Coldplay show in Boston, and immediately hid when they saw their faces on the big screen. Lead singer Chris Martin said, “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.” An attendee’s video of the incident went viral.
Byron resigned from the company on Saturday. Both Cabot and Byron have been removed the company’s leadership team webpage.
Pete DeJoy, Astronomer’s interim CEO, wrote in a post earlier this week that recent and unexpected national attention has turned the company into “a household name.”
In May, the New York-based company, which commercializes open source software, announced a $93 million investment round led by Bain Ventures and other investors, including Salesforce Ventures.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/24/astronomer-hr-chief-kristin-cabot-resigns-after-coldplay-kiss-cam.html
Vanderbilt Administrator Caught Saying DEI Remains ‘Part Of What We Do’
NASHVILLE, Tenn.—A Vanderbilt University administrator was caught on camera admitting that the school is actively pursuing diversity, equity, and inclusion goals in violation of President Donald Trump’s executive action cracking down on colleges pushing the leftist DEI agenda.
G.L. Black, the Vice Provost for Student Affairs and Dean of Students, said last month that the school remains “thoughtful around DEI work” and its “focus on belonging and building communities and sustaining communities and access and resources,” according to a video obtained by The Daily Wire.
“All the things that I would say are components of DEI work are part of what we do,” Black added. “Even if we don’t label everything as DEI work.”
Along with being nationally recognized for its pre-law and business programs, Vanderbilt — located in Nashville, Tennessee — is also a leading medical school, receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Last year, Vanderbilt ranked 10th in the country in total research support from the NIH.
After taking office in January, President Trump signed multiple executive orders targeting DEI practices in the federal government and at federally funded colleges and universities. In one executive order, Trump blasted DEI policies, saying they “undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system.”
Vanderbilt told The Daily Wire that it remains “fully compliant with all applicable federal and state laws” and added that it is “aware of recent covert recordings by external groups on university campuses nationwide.”
“Any comments by individual employees that suggest otherwise do not reflect university policy and are being reviewed through appropriate channels,” the university said.
Vice Provost Black did not return a request to comment from The Daily Wire.
After publication of this article, Vanderbilt released a statement saying that it hired the law firm Baker Donelson, which “will be tasked with reviewing the specific circumstances related to the recordings and identifying steps the university can take to ensure all employees fully understand the university’s policies and consistently act in accordance.”
“The university will review the findings and recommendations of the report and take any appropriate follow-up actions,” the statement added. “As part of our protocol, staff involved will step back from regular responsibilities to allow the review to unfold.”
The Education Department told The Daily Wire that Vanderbilt is already under investigation “for allegedly engaging in race-exclusionary practices in their graduate programs.” That investigation, which was announced in March, also targets 44 other universities nationwide. The Education Department alleges that Vanderbilt’s PhD Project, which focuses on providing networking opportunities for PhD students, “limits eligibility based on the race of the participants.”
“We expect all academic institutions that receive taxpayer support to abide by federal law and will continue to vigorously hold violators accountable,” the Education Department added.
Another Vanderbilt employee was recently caught on camera saying that the university’s DEI agenda has remained unchanged, even if the name has changed, Fox News reported. She said the new names for DEI help “clue people in.”
“At one point, you know, everybody, like different universities, were under investigation for their, like, DEI practices and stuff like that. So, that’s why I think the naming has changed,” said Ivie Carmouche, an academic coach at the university’s Center for Student Wellbeing.
“We’re in the Center for Student Wellbeing — like I said, we have things that clue people in and let people know that this is a safe space for everybody,” she added. “Belonging and Communities is like as close to that DEI work you can probably get. Previously, they were the Center for Social Justice and Identities.”
Yet another Vanderbilt employee was recently caught discussing the school’s DEI policies and ripping Republican Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn.
“We have this one, gosh I think she’s a representative or something like that, and I just heard that she may run for governor. And I’m going, oh God, help us,” said Janet Roberts, Vanderbilt’s Peabody Facilities Manager. “She’s ridiculous.”
“We are heavily supported by federal funding … we’re not advertising diversity and inclusion lectures,” Roberts added. “We’re flying under the radar.”
Blackburn on Wednesday wrote to Vanderbilt University Chancellor Dr. Daniel Diermeier to express her “concern regarding reports that Vanderbilt University is concealing its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs instead of fully complying with President Trump’s executive action to end wasteful DEI programs in educational institutions,” The Daily Wire reported.
“Renaming woke DEI programs to circumvent compliance and public scrutiny degrades the educational experience of your students and the trust placed in institutions of higher education like Vanderbilt,” Blackburn added. “As a beneficiary of federal funding, Vanderbilt has a responsibility to align with the President’s executive order and return to a focus on providing quality education to your students. Instead of rebranding harmful, woke DEI initiatives, woke DEI initiatives, Vanderbilt should focus on the important work of research and workforce development that the institution does so well.”
Administrators at two other Tennessee universities, the University of Tennessee and Belmont University, were recently caught on camera discussing their respective institutions’ DEI goals.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-video-vanderbilt-administrator-caught-saying-dei-remains-part-of-what-we-do