ALBANY — Multiple students were unknowingly admitted to Excelsior College and other schools in a decade-long financial aid scheme prosecutors say raked in over $200,000.
Shelbra Long, a 58-year-old Texas woman who concocted the scheme, was sentenced Thursday to a year and a day in prison for conspiring to commit mail fraud and wire fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Long pleaded guilty in February, admitting that from April 2010 to February 2020 she and three others would use stolen identities to apply for admission at online colleges across the country — including at Excelsior College in Albany, court documents show. Once the U.S. Department of Education disbursed the financial aid, Long and others would withdraw the “student” from enrollment and be refunded unused financial aid, which was sent to bank accounts they opened in the purported students’ names…