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Police order adult woman who attended Boston schools as fake student to stay away from school property
The woman enrolled in three high schools — one in Dorchester, one in Brighton, and one in Jamaica Plain.
An adult woman fraudulently enrolled as a student at Boston Public Schools this year, using fake identities to attend three different high schools, according to Superintendent Mary Skipper.
The woman used fake identification and paperwork to register and transfer schools under multiple pseudonyms, Skipper said in a letter to parents. During the 2022-2023 school year, Skipper said, the woman attended Jeremiah E. Burke High School in Dorchester, Brighton High School, and English High School in Jamaica Plain.
Boston police said they are investigating the incident and have ordered the woman to stay away from BPS property, but it is unclear if any charges will be brought.
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“I am deeply troubled that an adult would breach the trust of our school communities by posing as a student,” Skipper said in a statement to The Boston Globe. “This appears to be a case of extremely sophisticated fraud.”
The fake student was caught after a BPS staff member noticed “irregularities” in her paperwork last week, Skipper said. The staff member reported their findings to district leadership, and they immediately contacted Boston police.
“While the investigation is in its early stages and remains ongoing, school officials have not identified any incidents of harm to students or staff,” Skipper wrote in the letter. “At this time, families of students who may have interacted with this individual are being contacted directly by school staff and investigators.”
How the fake student was caught
According to the police report about the incident, the investigation into the fake student began June 14 when a man came to English High School to take “his daughter” home. The man told staff he was going to take her out of the school and enroll her at St. Columbkille School in Brighton, a private Catholic school, because of the bullying she was receiving at English High School.
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The staff member found the statement odd because the fake student had only just enrolled at English High School on June 8, and because the school had begun to address the bullying earlier that morning, the report said.
“Concerned that there may be some sort of custodial issue with the parents, the school began to ask from the district all of the enrollment paperwork,” the report reads. “It was when looking through the paperwork that a school
administrator noticed that one of the forms submitted for enrollment was not right.”
The administrator noticed that the letterhead on a form supposedly from the Department of Children and Families (DCF) was incorrect, the report said. The administrator then tried the number provided for the social worker listed as working with the family, but it went to voicemail.
When the administrator called the DCF office listed on the paperwork to speak with the social worker, the department reportedly said that no social worker by that name worked at that office. A DCF worker then looked up the name of the social worker to see where they worked, but found no DCF employees with that name.
What we still don’t know about the fake student
Neither police nor BPS has released the true identity of the fake student or the pseudonyms she used. It is unclear whether the fake student was enrolled at BPS prior to this school year, what her age is, or what her motive was.
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Three suspects are listed on the police report, but most of their information is redacted. The only information provided is that two are white women, and one is a white man.
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WCVB reported that a source told them the fake student is 32 years old and worked as a social worker for DCF from 2016 to 2017, during parts of 2018, and from December 2021 to February 2023. DCF is also investigating the incident, the news station reported.
A few cases of adults enrolling as fake students in high schools have been reported in recent years. In 2018, a 25-year-old man enrolled at a Dallas high school to “relive his basketball glory days.” He was caught after he tried to date a 14-year-old.
In 2022, a 28-year-old Hispanic woman enrolled at a Louisiana high school because she wanted to learn English. Earlier this year, a 29-year-old South Korean woman enrolled at a New Jersey high school to “recreate the sense of safety” she felt over a decade ago while attending a Massachusetts boarding school.
Boston police did not respond to further questions Tuesday night.
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