The Trump administration has blocked $60 million in fraudulent student loan applications since launching a new risk assessment tool last month, the Daily Caller has learned exclusively.
The Department of Education launched a new risk assessment tool on April 26 to screen federal student aid applicants for fraud. Since the tool launched two weeks ago, the administration has found about 300,000 fraudulent applications that amounted to $60 million in student loans, officials told the Caller. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: JD Vance’s Anti-Fraud Task Force Uncovers $6 Billion In Suspected Fraudulent Government Contracts)
“We’re using best in class technology, and we’ve been able to stop a lot of those fraudulent activities that are there,” a senior administration official told the Caller.
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon waves as she is acknowledged during a military mothers celebration in the East Room of the White House on May 6, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The department will also now be instructing colleges across the country to also screen applications for fraud, the official shared with the Caller.
“We kind of started this entire process around identity verification. We provided institutions flexibility on how they verify identities that they can do online, through Zoom, or in person,” the official shared.
“We continue to work with institutions to provide as much flexibility as they identify identities,” the official added.
Tackling fraud has become a focus of the Trump administration. The White House recently launched an Anti-Fraud Task Force, led by Vice President J.D. Vance. The Department of Justice also added an assistant attorney general dedicated to rooting out fraud across the country.
The effort has been largely inspired by YouTube Nick Shirley, who exposed nearly a dozen Somali-run daycare centers in Minnesota that were not actually providing services.
The vice president and his task force are investigating Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar for alleged immigration fraud. “So we actually think that Ilhan Omar definitely committed immigration fraud against the United States of America,” the vice president told conservative personality Benny Johnson in an interview. “And I talked to [White House deputy chief of staff] Stephen Miller about this, actually, recently. We’re trying to look at what the remedies are.”
“That’s the thing that we’re trying to figure out is what are the legal remedies now that we know that she’s committed immigration fraud? How do you go after her? How do you investigate her? How do you actually do the thing? How do you build the case necessary to get some justice for the American people?” he added. “There’s a related issue, Benny, which is she has been at the center of a lot of the worst fraudsters in the Somali community.”
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