By KRISTEN A. LEE
Published: May 30, 2005

WASHINGTON, May 29 - One of the Department of Education's latest weapons against student loan fraud is a former identity thief who assumed more than 50 aliases to collect about $316,000 in federal student grants and loans over three and a half years.

The man, John E. Christensen, 64, now in prison in Arizona, shared the details of his scam in an interview required as part of his plea agreement. The Education Department has distributed the interview on DVD to colleges and universities as part of an effort by the agency's inspector general and federal student aid offices to combat student loan fraud.

The Department of Education disburses about $65 billion in student financial aid annually. The process of applying for and obtaining student loans, once done entirely on paper, is now 90 percent Web-based. But while computers have made the loan process faster and more efficient, they have also provided new opportunities for people who want to cheat the system.

"It's becoming easier and easier all the time because everything is done on computer," Mr. Christensen said in the interview. "You never have to see anybody."

Mr. Christensen stole the identities of inmates in the Arizona prison system, whom he contacted under the guise of helping them with their court cases. Through correspondence, he gleaned enough personal information to enroll in classes and apply for student loans using the inmates' identities.

Identity theft is not the only form of student loan fraud. In another scam, students underreport their family income on financial aid applications to increase their awards.

In 2003, about $365 million in Pell Grants, out of the approximately $12 billion awarded each year to low-income undergraduates, went to students who misrepresented their families' incomes on financial aid forms, John P. Higgins Jr., inspector general for the Department of Education, said in testimony before the House Government Reform Committee last week.

In response, the department is asking Congress to change the Internal Revenue Code to allow officials to check the financial information on student loan applications against I.R.S. records. Theresa S. Shaw, the Education Department's chief operating officer for federal student aid, told Congress last week that this change would not only ensure that families report their income accurately but also simplify the application process for students.

In other fraud cases, school officials have collected federal aid for students who never attended the school or who dropped out. In his testimony, Mr. Higgins said that officials at for-profit schools committed almost three-quarters of the cases of this type of fraud.

The department has created a Web site, www.ed.gov/misused, to instruct students on how to protect their identities. The site warns students of a telemarketing scheme in which people claiming to be Education Department officials offer aid and then request bank or credit card numbers.

"Protect your Social Security number and other personal information," Mr. Higgins warns on the Web site. "Don't let identity thieves rob you of your educational future!"