Indian student deported after falsifying academic records

A former student of Lehigh University was deported from the U.S. upon being exposed that he fabricated academic records and made up his father’s death to qualify for financial aid.

The university’s police department arrested Aryan Anand, an international student from India, on April 30 following an investigation into a Reddit post where he exposed his crimes, ABC reported.

“I created a completely fake death certificate of my father, but I did and sent that to my college, saying my dad got cancer and is dead, so my mother would receive his pension and that would be almost half of his actual income, so I won’t be able to pay for these 5k also,” Anand wrote in the now-deleted post.

A Reddit moderator investigated Anand’s claims and unmasked his identity, then forwarded the post to Lehigh University.

“The defendant only had one other university that he followed, which was Lehigh University. So, the moderator actually reached out to Lehigh to give them a heads up,” Northampton County Assistant District Attorney Michael Weinert said.

Anand also fabricated financial records and transcripts, creating a fake email address resembling that of his principal’s to produce false letters of recommendations.

Officials charged Anand with forgery and theft of services, facing a potential jail sentence of 10 to 20 years. A plea deal allowed Anand to be expelled from the institution and deported back to India.

“It was difficult to really verify these things. I think that was great work by Lehigh and their police force. They were able to really dig deep and find all this really was false,” Weinert said.

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