A 19-year-old Indian student, who was arrested and charged with fabricating documents to secure admission to a US university, will be deported to India under a plea agreement with American authorities.
Aryan Anand submitted fake and altered documents to gain entry into Lehigh University, a private research institution in Pennsylvania, for the 2023-2024 academic year. A report in Lehigh University’s student newspaper ‘The Brown and White’ revealed last month that a police investigation uncovered Anand’s falsification of admission and financial aid documents. As part of his deceit, he even “faked his father’s death” to secure admission and a scholarship.
Anand was arraigned by Magisterial District Judge Jordan Knisley on June 12 and was given a bail of USD 25,000. He pleaded guilty to one count of forgery. As part of the plea agreement, he was sentenced to one to three months in Northampton County Prison, “which equated to a time-served sentence,” as reported by lehighvalleylive.com quoting defense attorney Molly Heidorn. Under the terms of the deal, Anand must return to India, and Lehigh University opted not to pursue restitution of approximately USD 85,000. He was released to the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A release from Northampton County’s district attorney Stephen Baratta’s office indicated that Anand created a fake email address impersonating a school principal. The report on lehighvalleylive.com noted that Anand’s father is alive and resides in India.
Anand’s deception was exposed after he shared a post on Reddit titled ‘I have built my life and career on lies,’ which prompted the investigation. In this anonymous post, he detailed his fraudulent scheme. The Brown and White report mentioned that the investigation started when a Reddit monitor alerted Lehigh’s Admissions Department about the post on April 26.
“The criminal complaint revealed the thread was authored by someone with the username ‘u/transportationOK4728,’ and ‘the creator was following only one University group on Reddit, which was Lehigh University,’” the report stated.
Further investigation by Lehigh police identified Anand as the author of the post, which has since been deleted. In it, he outlined his scheme. Anand admitted to creating a fake email address in the format of principal@schoolname.com for his application, submitting a death certificate for his father to obtain additional financial aid, falsifying tax documents, altering his secondary school transcripts for years 1-3, and creating a false “Senior School Certificate Examination” to demonstrate success in his final year of secondary school, according to the report.
Anand confessed that this 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 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,” the criminal complaint stated. 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 theft of services, the report concluded.
