DOJ officials slam judge for questioning Lindsey Halligan’s status as US attorney

(UVALDE, Texas) — Javier Cazares, whose 9-year-old daughter Jackie was killed in the Uvalde, Texas, mass shooting, said he feels failed again after a jury on Wednesday night acquitted former school district police officer Adrian Gonzales on all 29 counts of child endangerment.

“We had a little hope, but it wasn’t enough,” Cazares said outside court. “Again, we are failed. I don’t even know what to say.”

Prosecutors had alleged Gonzales did not follow his training and endangered the 19 students who died and an additional 10 students who survived the May 24, 2022, Robb Elementary School mass shooting. Gonzales’ lawyers argued he was unfairly blamed for a broader law-enforcement failure that day.

Cazares said he was hopeful that the jury might have reached a different conclusion, but “prepared for the worst.”

“I need to keep composed for my daughter. It has been an emotional rollercoaster since day one. I am pissed,” he said. 

Jackie’s uncle, Jesse Rizo, told reporters he was concerned about the message the verdict might send to police officers who respond to future mass shootings. 

“I respect the jury’s decision, but what message does it send?” he said. “If you’re an officer, you can simply stand by, stand down, stand idle, and not do anything and wait for everybody to be executed, killed, slaughtered, massacred.” 

Jackie’s aunt, Julissa Rizo, pushed back on the defense narrative that Gonzales responded as best he could, telling ABC News, “That’s not true.”

“There were two monsters on May 24. One was the shooter, and the other one was the one that never went in, that could have avoided this,” she said.

Defense attorney Jason Goss told reporters that he believes the acquittal clears Gonzales’ name. 

“The evidence showed that not only did he not fail, but he put himself in great danger,” Goss said.

Gonzales told ABC News he plans on “picking up the pieces and moving forward.”

Defense attorney Nico LaHood said he will continue to pray for the victims’ families. 

“We understand that their separation from their loved one is going to be felt as long as they walk on this earth, and we don’t ignore that. We acknowledge that,” he said. “We’re just going to continue to pray for them.”

Cazares said he will attend the trial of the other officer charged, former Uvalde Schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo.

Arredondo, who was the on-site commander on the day of the Robb Elementary shooting, is also charged with endangerment or abandonment of a child and has pleaded not guilty. His case has been delayed indefinitely by an ongoing federal lawsuit filed after the U.S. Border Patrol refused repeated efforts by Uvalde prosecutors to interview Border Patrol agents who responded to the shooting, including two who were in the tactical unit responsible for killing the gunman at the school. 

ABC News’ John Quiñones and Emily Shapiro contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — A group of 800 parents — including those who have already filed suit and those who have retained lawyers with the intent to sue –sent a letter to the board of directors of Roblox demanding the gaming company stop attempts to keep lawsuits out of the public eye.

Roblox, launched in 2006, has been at the center of recent controversy, with some parents alleging that the platform has been used to help facilitate child sexual exploitation and grooming. 

The company is facing over 100 lawsuits that were recently consolidated, with one law firm telling ABC News that it is investigating thousands of child sexual exploitation and abuse claims.

Roblox had nearly 83 million average daily active users in 2024, according to its financial reports. It reported $3.6 billion in revenue that year.

Pat Huyett, one of the attorneys representing families in the lawsuits, said Roblox’s legal strategy has been to file motions to compel arbitration — a private, out-of-court process where claims are settled confidentially by a third party.

“They are confidential, they’re secretive,” Huyett said. “Anything that happens in those arbitration proceedings does not become public, so Roblox’s conduct can’t be scrutinized by the public.”

In the letter sent Sunday night, the parents asked the board to “stop the improper and shameful attempts to force these vulnerable, sexually abused and exploited children into secret arbitration proceedings.” 

The letter includes signatures from parents in Washington, California, Florida and Texas who allege their children were targeted by predators.

“These children deserve their day in court,” the parents wrote.

The company has consistently responded to the lawsuits and allegations by stating that protecting children is a priority and announcing investments in safety measures, including artificial intelligence age verification. 

According to Roblox, inappropriate content is against the rules and standards of the game. The company says it uses thousands of human moderators and artificial intelligence tools to police content.

“We are deeply troubled by any allegations about harms to children online and are committed to setting the industry standard for safety,” a spokesperson for Roblox previously told ABC News. “To protect our users, we have rigorous, industry-leading policies, including limiting chat for younger users and employing advanced filters designed to block the sharing of personal information. Roblox also does not allow users to share images or videos. We also collaborate closely with law enforcement.”

A separate group of 150 parents sent a similar letter to Discord, a communication platform that families allege predators use to communicate with minors after meeting them on Roblox. 

Roblox and Discord did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Discord previously told ABC News the company is “committed to safety” and said it requires all users to be 13 to use their platform. 

“We maintain strong systems to prevent the spread of sexual exploitation and grooming on our platform and also work with other technology companies and safety organizations to improve online safety across the internet,” the spokesperson previously said. 

The letter from the parents contains accounts from parents about their children’s experience, including a Washington state teenager allegedly coerced into sending explicit images and a minor in California who was allegedly groomed on the platform and later died by suicide. 

Families from Florida and Texas also described experiences involving extortion, self-harm and physical assault.

The push from parents follows a ruling from a judge in November that rejected Roblox’s attempt to force a child exploitation case into arbitration. In the order, the California judge cited the federal Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act (EFAA), which prohibits forced arbitration in cases of sexual abuse. Roblox has appealed the order.

In the letter sent on Sunday, the parents argued that while Roblox claims to prioritize “community before company,” it is simultaneously “attempting to silence abused and exploited children in secret arbitration.”

“By trying to force sexually abused and exploited children to tell their stories only in private, confidential proceedings, Roblox seeks to protect predators and itself, not its users,” the letter states.

Huyett told ABC News, “The families really just want to heal … but on the other hand, they want accountability.”

Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Murat Mayor has no need for an associate’s degree. The 58-year-old business analyst already has a Ph.D. But when he and his son, a high school senior, attempted last fall to apply for federal student financial aid, they learned that an account associated with both of their identities already existed.

Those accounts showed applications to multiple community colleges — and much more.

“We noticed that there [was] a lot of activity” on accounts created in their names, Mayor said in an interview with ABC News. “There are a lot of applications, loan applications, grant applications … then we panicked.”

Mayor knew immediately that something was amiss. He assumed his identity had been stolen. But he had no concept of the breadth of the scheme that had ensnared his and his son’s identity, and he had certainly never heard of the army of digital fraudsters perpetrating the crime.

‘A huge issue’
They are known as “ghost students,” and for thousands of colleges across the country, these sophisticated thieves have a become a scourge. The scammers will use stolen or fake identities to enroll in classes online and sign up for Pell grants and loans, then disappear once they get the money — robbing the federal government of hundreds of millions of dollars and leaving an untold number of victims like Mayor and his son in their wake.

“It’s a huge issue,” said Jason Williams, the assistant inspector general for investigations at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General. “As they’re stealing identities … these loans are not being repaid. They’re being assigned to people [who] don’t even know they have a debt with U.S. Department of Education … [until] the Internal Revenue Service says you owe the Department of Education money.”

Fraudsters have attempted to steal student financial aid for decades, Williams said. But “when the pandemic [hit], everybody went to online learning. Well, by doing that, it really did open the door” for more widespread fraud, said Williams.

Scammers have realized that the move to remote learning at community colleges provides an opportunity to leverage the power of artificial intelligence to expand their reach and circumvent identity verification controls. Almost overnight, experts said, the fraud grew exponentially.

Over the past five years, the federal government has investigated more than $350 million in fraud perpetrated by “ghost student” schemes, Williams said. “And that’s only in the universe of what we know, and what we have adjudicated,” he added. “There’s a lot of stuff that we don’t know that’s out there.”

Williams said his office has more than 200 investigations open nationwide, with some schemes suspected of racking up more than a billion dollars in ill-gotten gains.

Open season on open enrollment
The federal government is on the hook for tuition aid lost to scammers. But it is the community colleges, which accept almost all applicants through open enrollment, that often carry the burden of sniffing out fake applications. And doing so requires the resources, technology and expertise that many institutions do not possess.

Experts say the scope of the fraud is enormous. In California alone, nearly a third of all community college applicants in 2024 were identified as fraudulent, according to the California Community Colleges, the state’s administrative body for the community college system.  

Similar figures exist across the country. ABC News and its nationwide network of owned and operated stations investigated the rise of “ghost students” and found that almost no community college has been spared.

Gina Macklin, a senior administrator at Delaware County Community College, told WPVI-TV in Philadelphia that the school found more than 500 fake students enrolled in its classes in 2023, which she described as “a terrible year” for the school, not least of which because those fraudsters “had taken seats from legitimate students.”

Dr. Beatriz Chaidez, the chancellor of the San Jose Evergreen Community College District, told KGO-TV in San Francisco that at one point, a 50-person online class was booked in minutes and had 100 individuals on its waitlist. The school later learned that just six of those “students” were real people trying to get an education.

“The rest were fraudulent accounts,” she said. “Ghost students.”

Software solutions
The Trump administration last year implemented enhanced fraud controls and identity verification requirements for schools, which experts say helped schools combat fake applicants. But to help root out the fraud, many community colleges have turned to a growing marketplace of identity verification software vendors.

Maurice Simpkins, a retired NFL linebacker, operates one such business. His software is called Student Application Fraudulent Examination, or S.A.F.E.

The platform acts as a firewall for the schools, Simpkins said. “From a football term,” he likes to say, “it’s an offensive line.” He says it catches around 95% of fake applications instantaneously and refers more to the school for additional scrutiny. After just two years on the market, S.A.F.E. is in use in more than 150 schools nationwide, he said.

Administrators at more than a dozen community colleges characterized the rise of “ghost students” as a true crisis. The fraudsters, those administrators say, are taking advantage of a vulnerability created by the degree to which these schools are accessible to students.

Officials say the scammers’ schemes range from the savvy to the sloppy — and all are brazen. One school administrator at a midwestern community college who asked not to be identified shared a “business proposal” he said he received last year from an alleged scammer.

In an email, the alleged scammer, who identified themselves as “Ken from Tanzania,” offered to pay the administrator a share of the proceeds for his help in perpetrating the fraud. “I would really like us to partner and work for 3semesters [sic] and we get something good for us and our families.”  

Scammers who operate from overseas present a special challenge, according to investigators. But many of the “ghost students” operate within U.S. borders.

Before their arrests in 2018 and 2019, a father and son in Arizona made off with more than $7 million from ghost student scams, and both served 12-month prison sentences after pleading guilty. And a Maryland man who used the identities of 60 people to take in more than $6.7 million in fraudulent financial aid was sentenced in 2023 to four years in prison.

Murat Mayor, the 58-year-old business analyst, believes he and his son had their identities stolen as part of a massive hack of their health care provider in 2024. After months of back-and-forth with law enforcement and administrators at community colleges in Maryland and Utah, he finally cleared himself and his son from enrollment records earlier this month.

“He’s a straight-A student, has been very successful — an honor student, so he’s doing well,” Mayor told ABC News regarding his son.

Mayor’s son has applied to study business finance in the fall. And this time, it will really be him.

Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.