ghost students stealing aid money that could be ours

So they just arrested someone running fake student accounts to pull over a million in federal aid. I have been exactly there waiting for my financial aid to come through while barely making rent, and knowing that money was getting siphoned off by fraud makes me furious. Nobody told me when I went back to school that this was happening at scale, but it explains why aid packages got tighter and more competitive. This stuff directly impacts how much help we actually get because schools and the government tighten everything up when fraud happens. Keep your eye on your FAFSA verification process because they're gonna crack down harder on all of us now.