The El Camino College Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department are investigating a phishing scheme involving a fraudulent website distributing fake checks that appear to be from the Financial Aid Office.
David Brown, the assistant director for financial aid and basic needs, said there have been about 15 fraudulent checks reported.
“We are not investigating who created them, it’s outside our scope of work,” Brown said. “We are working with the campus police and the sheriff’s department in order to make them aware of what’s going on.”
El Camino College’s Office of Marketing and Communications alerted the campus community with an advisory email on Aug. 30 regarding the phishing scheme. According to the advisory, El Camino College does not issue physical checks for financial aid.
So far, the Financial Aid Office has not been financially impacted by the situation.
“They aren’t actually stealing federal funds, they are just stealing funds from the check cashing services,” Brown said.
The original reporting party, the owner of the check cashing location that funded one of the checks has been financially impacted by the phishing scheme.
The Union made multiple attempts to get in contact with DCS checking services, who originally reported the fraudulent checks, but were unable to be reached for comment.
Brown added that ECC does not send money via checks since the college relies on mobile banks for its finances.
“We don’t verify checks, it’s not something that we do at El Camino College. We actually don’t even cut checks, we have bank mobile, which is our service provider for financial aid. So it all goes through a bank mobile so typically all direct deposit or dispersed through the bank mobile itself, so it’s very odd for us to even have a physical check cut,” Brown added.
Fake students are being created along with fraudulent checks to hide the identity of the people behind the scheme.
“Fortunately they aren’t targeting students…They’re making up students, they’re making up these fake checks and even made up a fake website to make it look like these are real students to verify the checks,” Brown said.
Interim Police Chief Ruben Lopez said there have been no reports of any fraudulent checks being cashed by any El Camino students.
“We haven’t been made aware that anybody’s been actively recruiting our students,” Lopez said.
According to Lopez, a fraudulent website was created to draw students into cashing fraudulent checks. He warns that those who knowingly cash these checks without reporting it to the college run the risk of catching criminal charges.
“The website and the phone number were created to bypass those security levels that the check cashing places usually go to,” Lopez said.
Sergeant Francisco Esqueda said the Financial Aid Office gave ECCPD all recorded information regarding these checks to start an investigation, which was passed on to LASD’s Lakewood station.
“Right now, we have deferred most of the investigation onto outside agencies. In order for us to take the primary role for an investigation like this the college district has to have some kind of legal standing to do so.” Esqueda said.
The Union attempted to get in contact with LASD, but they could not be reached.
ECCPD is urging anyone who is a victim of this phishing scheme to contact the department at (310) 660-3100.
Greg Fontanilla contributed to this report
