In what can only be described as a plotline the writers of “Catch Me If You Can” might have rejected for being too on the nose, a woman who attended Harvard University is now accused of attending Harvard University under an identity not entirely her own. According to federal prosecutors, Isabela Robinson spent four years living as someone she allegedly was not, collecting over $100,000 in student aid along the way and making it all the way to the hallowed halls of Harvard until, predictably, things fell apart as fictional identities tend to do under the weight of dorm room Wi-Fi and federal application processes.
Robinson is facing charges including wire fraud and identity theft, a combination that sounds technical unless you are the real person whose identity was pilfered in order to sneak into perhaps the nation’s most elite institution of higher education. Authorities say Robinson used falsified documents, including a stolen Social Security number, to enroll at Harvard starting in 2017, eventually being admitted to the university and receiving significant financial assistance under generally accepted but evidently not verified pretenses.
The victim, whose identity was allegedly lifted as seamlessly as a freshman’s bad term paper from Wikipedia, reportedly did not know her personal information had been used until quite recently. One assumes the realization came somewhere between a confusing credit check and discovering she was, unbeknownst to her, an Ivy League student with a GPA she never earned.
Meanwhile, Harvard issued a statement confirming that they cooperated with the investigation, carefully avoiding any commentary on their apparent inability to detect admissions based on creative nonfiction. The university, never one to pass up a learning opportunity, may well be adding “Fraud Detection 101” to the admissions checklist in future cycles.
“We take matters involving identity fraud seriously and have worked closely with law enforcement.” — Harvard spokesperson, speaking in the universal dialect of Institutional Embarrassment
Robinson was arrested in California and appeared in court last week. If convicted, she could face up to 20 years in prison for wire fraud and a mandatory two-year sentence for identity theft, which is quite the price tag for a degree that, it turns out, may not even have involved a real thesis.
In the end, Harvard got scammed, financial aid got misused, and someone out there is now finding out they are technically a Harvard dropout without the benefit of ever having skipped a lecture on Cartesian dualism.
Turns out, you really can fake it till you make it — just maybe not past the federal indictment stage.