The Biden administration failed to include proper fraud protections in the original plan for student loan relief, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a report released this week.
The GAO found that the Biden administration’s initial plan for student loan forgiveness, which the Supreme Court struck down in July, “left the door open” to borrowers who were ineligible for forgiveness to use fraudulent data to obtain debt relief.
“It is crucial that the department commit to fraud risk management in any future program it pursues,” the report states.
In a formal response to the GAO’s findings last month, the Federal Student Aid program’s chief operating officer Richard Cordray pushed back on the report’s conclusions.
“Faulting the Department’s implementation of its fraud risk management strategy as incomplete, when federal court orders prevented the Department from continuing to work on any aspect of the program, mischaracterizes those efforts,” Cordray wrote, according to USA Today.
A spokesperson for the Department of Education told Politico they had “a carefully tailored fraud risk management strategy to ensure that only qualified borrowers would receive relief while also protecting borrowers from scams,” and noted that the vast majority of applicants to the program qualified for relief.
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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