How California Community Colleges combats fraud with Pariveda Solutions and AWS

California Community Colleges (CCC) has developed an innovative machine learning-powered fraud detection solution with Pariveda Solutions and AWS to combat financial aid application fraud.

• Nearly 1 in 5 financial aid applications are estimated to be fraudulent in the CCC system
• Solution uses Amazon SageMaker, AWS Step Functions, AWS Lambda, and Amazon DynamoDB
• In one month (August 2025), the system: • Impacted 20% of applications • Caught 5% more fraud than previous methods • Allowed 15% more legitimate applications to pass through
• Goal is to identify fraudulent accounts at first point of contact without disrupting legitimate student applications
• Helps prevent issues like inaccurate enrollment data and faculty resource allocation

The project demonstrates how educational institutions can use machine learning to combat fraud while maintaining open access to education.