A Kenyan national has been indicted by a grand jury in Nebraska on five counts of theft of government money and five counts of aggravated identity theft, accused of helping run a scheme that stole American identities to enrol fake students in US colleges and pocket federal financial aid.

Francis Mogambi arrived in the United States in May 2024 after winning the Diversity Visa lottery, a programme that gives people from around the world a chance to become permanent residents. Just over two years later, he was facing federal charges. The grand jury returned the indictment on 19 October 2026. He was arrested shortly afterward and is being held in custody pending trial. He has not commented on the allegations.

How the alleged scheme worked

Prosecutors allege that between November 2025 and May 2026, Mogambi worked with associates in Kenya to steal the identities of US citizens. They then used those identities to enrol fictitious students in American colleges. Once the ghost students were in the system, financial aid payments were allegedly routed to Mogambi, who kept 30% and sent the rest to his associates in Kenya.

The intended loss in his individual case was $20,000 (£15,000), according to prosecutors. Court documents say Mogambi received $2,000 a week. They also allege he tried to recruit another person into the scheme, telling that individual he needed a business that would let him cash larger cheques without paying taxes.

Operation Ghostbusters

Mogambi’s case is part of a wider US investigation known as Operation Ghostbusters. Authorities say the probe has so far produced five indictments involving Kenyan nationals, and 40 more investigations remain open. The alleged fraud has cost taxpayers about $130m.

Hundreds of people have been affected after fraudsters allegedly stole their personally identifiable information and used it to access federal student aid. That information was sometimes sold online for between $4 and $8. The targets, according to the Justice Department, included low-income Americans who never had the chance to attend college.

Investigators identified 830,840 potentially fraudulent Federal Student Aid identification numbers tied to nearly $130m in September and October 2026. They recommended that the Department of Education disable them. The Justice Department stressed that this figure reflects financial aid associated with potentially fraudulent accounts, not confirmed losses.

A fight that reaches into victims’ lives

At a news conference on 29 October announcing the first charges in the investigation, Assistant Attorney General Colin M McDonald, who heads the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division, made a direct promise to the people behind the scheme.

“If you steal taxpayers’ dollars, if you exploit a programme meant to help students, we are resolved to find you and prosecute you,” he said.

McDonald said the fraudsters use what the Justice Department describes as “super intelligence” to place fake students in classrooms and complete coursework. That keeps the illusion of attendance alive and lets aid payments keep flowing.

“The goal is to keep the ghost student in school as long as possible. Semester after semester after semester stealing money from the taxpayers,” McDonald said.

The damage does not stop at the government’s bottom line. People whose identities are stolen can end up with student loan debt for courses they never took. McDonald described the impact on one victim in stark terms:

“His identity was stolen, his credit is now at risk, and his name is on the bill,” McDonald said.

He also said that nearly a third of community college applicants in California in 2024 had been identified as fraudulent. The scale of the problem, in other words, reaches well beyond a single defendant.

“In a flash, the money vanishes, often overseas in places like Kenya,” McDonald said.

The Kenya connection

The investigation has exposed alleged financial links between the United States and Kenya. In September, US officials travelled to Kenya to work with local law enforcement on extraditions, prosecutions and the recovery of money allegedly stolen from American taxpayers.

With help from Kenyan investigators, US authorities seized more than $750,000 from a cryptocurrency account belonging to a Kenyan national connected to the wider scheme. The Justice Department described it as the first international seizure of its kind in Kenya. That seizure was not linked to Mogambi’s individual case.

The pattern is repeating in other states. In a separate case in Virginia, prosecutors allege that a Kenyan national received more than 700 fraudulent student-aid refunds totalling about $1.44m. At least $1.3m was then moved through thousands of transactions to accounts in the US and Kenya.

In New Jersey, three people have been charged with allegedly acting as money mules in a scheme to obtain more than $1m in federal student aid. Prosecutors say the trio received the funds through US bank accounts, kept a cut for themselves and sent the rest to alleged co-conspirators in Kenya tied to a purported safari company.

What comes next

If convicted, Mogambi faces a mandatory prison term of at least 10 years, according to the Justice Department. Authorities say everyone convicted in these cases will also face orders for forfeiture of assets and restitution to victims, on top of any prison sentence.

The case is still at the charging stage, and every defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. But the numbers already on the table, from 830,840 flagged aid identifiers to $130m in suspected losses, show how far a single stolen identity can travel once it enters the federal aid system.