Social media post exposes admission fraud of Indian student

New York: A 19-year-old Indian student, who was arrested and charged with falsifying records to gain admission in a US university, will have to return to India under a plea deal entered into with American authorities. Aryan Anand had submitted fake and falsified documents to secure admission into Lehigh University, a private research university in Pennsylvania for the 2023-2024 academic year. Anand's forgery came to light after a post he shared on the social media site Reddit titled ‘I have built my life and career on lies' prompted the investigation into his case. In that anonymous post, he had laid out the details of his fraudulent scheme.

A report in the Lehigh University's student newspaper ‘The Brown and White', said last month that a police investigation had found that Anand had falsified admission and financial aid documents. The Brown and White report said that the investigation began when a Reddit monitor notified Lehigh's Admissions Department of the post on April 26. He had even “faked his father's death” as part of the conspiracy to obtain admission and scholarship, it said. Anand was arraigned by Magisterial District Judge Jordan Knisley on June 12, with a bail of USD 25,000. He pleaded guilty to one count of forgery. As part of the plea deal, he was sentenced to one to three months in Northampton County Prison, “which amounted to a time-served sentence”, lehighvalleylive.com quoted defence attorney Molly Heidorn as saying. As part of the deal, Anand is required to return to India and Lehigh chose not to seek restitution of about USD 85,000. He was released to the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to a release issued by the office of Northampton County's district attorney Stephen Baratta, Anand had created a fake email address impersonating a school principal, the report in lehighvalleylive.com said. The release had said that Anand's father is alive and in India.

“The criminal complaint revealed the thread was authored by someone with the username ‘u/transportationOK4728,' and ‘the creator was following only one University group of Reddit and that University was Lehigh University',” the report said. Further investigation by the Lehigh police identified Anand as the author of the post, which has since been deleted but in which he had outlined his scheme. Anand had indicated that he “created a fake email address in the format of [email protected] for his application, submitted a death certificate for his father to acquire additional hardship financial aid, falsified tax documentation, altered his secondary school year 1-3 transcripts and created a false “Senior School Certificate Examination” to show success in his final year of secondary school”, the report said.

Anand said it was “all for the purpose of securing admission and financial aid to attend a university in the United States.” The criminal complaint filed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on April 30 accused Anand of violating the statutes of forgery, tampering with records or identification, theft by deception and theft of services. “Metadata revealed the death certificate and tax documents were altered using the “iLovePDF” website, and the academic documents were modified using Adobe Photoshop,” according to the criminal complaint. Anand was arrested and charged with a second-degree felony for forgery and tampering with records or identification, a third-degree felony for theft by deception and a third-degree felony for thrift of services, the report said.