Financial aid professionals will be busy checking student identity after a few hundred thousand FAFSAs were selected for additional verification.
The selection of the FAFSAs for additional identity verification follows the implementation of a new fraud detection system.
On May 14, the Department added information to a April 15 announcement about the fraud detection system, saying it had completed the one-time fraud detection screening of all 2026–27 FAFSA forms that were submitted before real-time fraud detection was implemented in late April.
The Department said as a result of the review, approximately 300,000 applications from the 2026–27 award year have been selected for Verification Tracking Group V5. Schools will receive system-generated transactions for any application selected through this process. According to the Department, each selected application was identified based on indicators associated with suspected fraud risk.
In the announcement, the Department clarified that in addition to all applicants completing an initial FAFSA submission, a student that submits a new correction online will also be evaluated for fraud. As a result, if a student submits a correction and was not previously evaluated for fraud risk during the initial FAFSA submission or a prior correction, the application will be evaluated at that time.
