8/14/25 Inside Higher Ed reports on how AI is making it easier to manufacture convincing fake university websites. Why would you make a fake university?
One prospective student who was looking for a business degree program almost got hooked by Southeastern Michigan’s con, according to Walter Kraft, a spokesperson for Eastern Michigan University, which is a real, accredited institution in Ypsilanti.
“He came across an institution named Southeastern Michigan University, and it looked legit to him,” Kraft said. “So he contacted them and received a phone call telling him that his total tuition would be, like, $31,000, but he would receive a 90 percent scholarship and would only have to pay $3,100.”
The fake university asked the would-be student to provide documents for his scholarship application, but he never followed up. Two days later, he got a call from a number spoofing Eastern Michigan’s admissions office number, and the person on the other line told him he got the scholarship, despite never receiving any of his documentation.
After that, he received an admissions offer on letterhead that looked similar to Eastern Michigan’s, which raised his suspicions.
I think I would go to campus before writing a check but then again I am not 18.
Let me emphasize that AI is not enabling a new type of fraud, merely allowing criminals to do it at scale. This is analogous to how spam speeded up the number of frauds that used to be done by confidence men in person can now be done with less labor and less risk of arrest. Here is one that is new to me:
The Pedigree Dog A stranger walks into a bar with a dog trailing him on a leash. He asks if the owner can watch his dog for a few minutes while he places a bet or attends to a business deal. While the stranger is gone, a second con artist arrives and notices the dog. He claims to be an expert on dog breeding, and says that this dog is worth hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. He asks the owner if the dog is for sale because he'll pay top dollar. The entire scam hinges on the bar owner's greed. The assumption is he'll see the chance to buy the dog from the unsuspecting owner for a low price, then sell the valuable dog to this "expert breeder." He tells the dog expert to come back later, then offers to buy the dog when its owner returns. The dog's owner sells it, but the "expert" never comes back to buy it. The two con artists walk away with a few hundred dollars, and the bar owner gets stuck with a "mutt." In Neil Gaiman's novel "American Gods," two characters discuss this con using a violin instead of a dog.
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