The latest on student loan lobbyists, fraud investigators, and a fake heiress scam
Here are my favorite personal finance reads from around the web this week.
How the student loan industry lobbied DeVos to fight state regulations
—Politico
More than 2,000 emails obtained by Politico reveal that student loan companies lobbied the Department of Education to curtail crackdowns on their predatory practices. States had begun investigating student borrowers’ allegations of abuse, but in 2018 the DOE declared that federal law preempts any state authority over companies servicing federal student loans.
Insurance companies are paying cops to investigate their own customers
—Buzzfeed News
Buzzfeed News has found that several major home and auto insurers have provided financial incentives to law enforcement to investigate and prosecute their own customers. Getting law enforcement to focus on insurance fraud cases has resulted in policyholders facing jail time for false charges and walking away from legitimate claims.
How they (online graduate programs) get you
—The Atlantic
To recruit students for increasingly popular online graduate programs, top-tier universities are using third-party online program managers (OPMs). These OPMs, which introduce themselves as admissions counselors or enrollment advisers, use aggressive telemarketing and other sales tactics but often do not have in-depth knowledge about the schools, or are incentivized to sell more profitable programs.
How one woman was tricked out of $62K by her fake-heiress friend—and all the red flags she overlooked
—MarketWatch
Last year, a self-proclaimed German heiress, Anna Delvey, was exposed as a fraud who falsified bank documents and conned people and businesses out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. This former Vanity Fair photo editor was one of her victims.
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