Falsifying,Applications,for,St education Falsifying Applications for Student Loans Could Bring Big Tr

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Federal student loan limits, combined with spiraling tuition costs andthe current recession, mean that federally guaranteed student loans —those backed by the federal government — will often only cover part ofthe entire cost of a college education, leaving students to fill in the gapswith private student loans, parent student loans, personal savings, and familycontributions.The federal student aid program requires studentswho are seeking federal financial aid to fill out the Free Application forFederal Student Aid (FAFSA). The FAFSA is a comprehensive form that requiresstudents to submit personal financial information, as well as information abouttheir parents’ income, savings, assets, and other resources available to helppay for college. Based on the results of the FAFSA analysis, some students willqualify for federal grants, federal student loans, or acombination of both.Grants are the “gold standard” of federal studentaid because they don’t require repayment. Federal grants are usually madethrough the federal Pell Grant program,though other smaller grant programs do exist. Pell Grant awards currently rangebetween about $500 and a maximum award of $5,550, depending upon income andfinancial need. According to the U.S. Department of Education, only about 50 percentof students who apply for Pell Grants are actually qualified by income toreceive program funding.Some students may be tempted to falsify informationthey provide on the FAFSA to help tilt the balance of their aid package from studentloans to grants. Besides being a bad idea, that approach is also against thelaw. The consequences for filing a false federal financial aid application canbe serious.Facing the Fallout From Student Loan Fraud Falsifying information on the FAFSA is consideredfederal fraud because the ultimate result of filling out the form is adetermination of eligibility for federal financial aid. In the most seriousfraud cases, applicants file multiple FAFSAs, using different identities to getmultiple federal financial aid awards.A recent case involving an Alaska woman who usedtwo different identities to bilk lenders out of hundreds of thousands ofdollars in student loans that she used to play the stock market, purchase acondo, and launch a startup resulted in a prison term of nearly five years andfines of more than $700,000 (“Alaska Woman With 2 Identities Gets Almost 5Years,” Associated Press, Sept. 10, 2010).Other recent high-profile student loan fraud casesinclude the sentencing of more than five dozen people in Arizona in whatauthorities described as a “massive” financial aid fraud scheme that would havedefrauded the United States out of more than a half-million dollars in studentloans, and the arrest of a New Jersey woman who used multiple stolen SocialSecurity numbers to collect nearly $200,000 in fraudulent student loans overfour years.In most cases, students and their families whoreport lower incomes on the FAFSA than on their annual tax returns will simplybe declared ineligible for some or all federal financial aid, depending uponthe nature of the misstatement.For the most part, however, cheating on theapplication for financial aid is hard, if only because the federal student aidprogram is heavily audited at every step of the process. The EducationDepartment has audit procedures for individuals, schools and school servicers,lenders and lender servicers, and guaranty agencies and servicer agencies.The long and short of it is that falsifyingdocumentation on the FAFSA is highly unlikely to be successful, and there arenumerous avenues through which discrepancies can be discovered. Financial aidthat is awarded based on false applications will be retracted, and the studentwill be required to repay the award and may also face fines, jail time, orother penalties.Lenders Catch Student Loan Scammers ThroughStandard CheckpointsOne audit report provided by the U.S. Department ofEducation found that almost 5 percent of the successful Pell Grantapplications for the 1995–96 school year contained deliberate misstatementsthat could be characterized as fraudulent. Since that time, the incomedocumentation requirements for financial aid applications have increasedsubstantially, and underreporting income on the FAFSA is highly unlikely tosucceed.The application process for non-federal private student loansis just as rigorous and can actually require even more documentation than thefederal financial aid application. Since lenders of private student loans areissuing credit-based loans, which depend on the creditworthiness of anapplicant and the applicant’s likelihood of repaying the loan, these lendersmay require students and their co-signers to provide pay stubs as proof ofincome and employment, copies of tax returns, and photo IDs — all thatin addition to the required credit report. Lenders are also required, under FTCguidelines, to take several steps toward protecting against identity theft andfraudulent applications for private student loans.Regardless of whether the federal government or aprivate lender issues the student loan, if a student loan is found to have beenobtained fraudulently, the borrower must repay the loan balance, except in afew rare (and extremely narrow) circumstances. Student loans typically cannotbe discharged through bankruptcy, so even if student borrowers don’t achievethe American Dream after graduation, they’ll still need to pay off theirstudent loan debt. 800x600 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-priority:99;mso-style-parent:"";mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;mso-para-margin:0in;mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}Pell Grants, student loans, private student loans