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Three Georgia women and an Alabama man pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the US Department of Education’s Federal financial aid programs worth millions of dollars. According to the Justice Department, they admitted enrolling people who were not eligible to attend college and completing financial aid applications using fake students’ names; they also did fake students’ homework and exams and manipulated grade requirements to continue qualifying for Federal financial aid.

The Enumeration Committee of the Federal Government of Nigeria’s homegrown feeding programme has uncovered 349 ghost schools in Nasarawa state. The Committee discovered that some officials were pocketing the money meant for school meals. Two officials were suspended and replaced, however, calls to remove Nasarawa state from the programme were rejected in order to avoid punishing the poor children benefiting from the scheme.

A recent report from Public Accounts Committee reveals the theft of billions of taxpayers' money pocketed by corrupt officials and school heads. The Mundeku Secondary School is one of the 4 ghost schools in the Ministry records with 1,188 students used by an official to steal Sh27,329,598.95 from public funds. The report found another officer inflating enrolment data for 185 schools, resulting in the overpayment of Sh269, 254,288. The cases have been submitted to the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission for investigation.

School officials in the city of Athens and Limestone County have conspired to obtain more public funding by claiming to enrol full-time private students in the system's virtual schools. The two school districts were improperly paid around $7 million in state education funding for the 2016-17 and 2017-18 school years. By November 2017, more than 500 private school students were fraudulently enrolled in Athens Renaissance schools and over 50 students in Conecuh County.

The World Bank has suspended the first tranche of $100 million in a programme to fund free schools in DR Congo after a November report found fake invoices, lists of teachers filled with fake names at non-existent schools, and alleged embezzlement of 63 billion Congolese francs ($31 million). Two senior officials, including the head of teachers’ payroll, are in pre-trial detention.

The All Meghalaya Minority Students’ Union (AMMSU) have filled a complaint to the commissioner and secretary of the state regarding the BPN Zaman Girl’s UP School. According to the president of AMMSU, a local of the village of Phersakandi, no one has heard or studied in this school. However, since 1992, grants have continued to come to the school and its fake teachers, and public funds have been misused for decades.

The Financial Prosecutor's Office has launched an investigation at the Ministry of Education regarding the education provided to Syrian refugee students funded by the United Nations, the World Bank, the European Union, and Germany. The list of children enrolled for evening classes in the 346 State schools includes a far greater number of students than those who actually attend them. The amount missing is calculated by multiplying the number of 15,000 ghost students to the $600 that donors allocate each year for every registered student. $9 million disappears each year since 2014.

287,000 ghost students were found registered in schools under the Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) programme. Schools, government officials, and NGOs are suspected to be involved in the preparation of a fake record Rs1.1 billion per year. A special audit of the funds received by PEF is being conducted and strict measures will be taken against the officers involved in this corruption case.