Dive Summary:
- Wisconsin colleges are fighting incidents of identity theft among students, which typically involve using stolen credit card numbers or making a payment on a student account using a fake e-check.
- College financial directors are working to change the way refunds are issued, as the most brazen identity theft cases involve fraudulent payments used to get cash or a check--as was the case with a recent incident involving two Egyptian students at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay who used a Nebraska woman's credit card for $3,300 in student account payments and attempted to get a refund.
- UWGB police Lt. Jeff Gross says campus police at the school have investigated about four or five fraud reports a year since 2011, and the school's information technology security officer, David Kieper, says the FTC's Red Flags protocol mostly deals with safety checks when financial cases are dealt with in person, underscoring the difficulty of spotting online fraud.
From the article:
It’s not every day that a woman from Nebraska pays for two students from Egypt to attend the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Staff became suspicious and investigated after one of the students came to the bursar’s office to get a refund because his account was overpaid after the woman’s credit card was used online in April to pay more than $3,300 on the students’ accounts. Employees later determined the woman never gave anyone permission to use her credit card number. ...