(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) A foreign student was arrested by police after admitting in a Reddit post to falsifying documents and lying about his life in order to attain a full-ride to Lehigh University, The Blaze reported.
Aryan Anand, 19, was exposed in the wake of the post and stripped of his scholarship by the small university in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Writing anonymously on Reddit in a post titled, “I have built my life and career on lies,” Anand detailed the many falsehoods that he used in order to get accepted into Lehigh–which he did not name—with fake transcripts and financial statements.
He even lied about the death of his father, who is alive and well in India to this day.
Unfortunately for Anand, however, he followed another Reddit thread that was associated with Lehigh University, leading to the informing of the school that one of its students had contrived his credentials.
“The defendant only had one other university that he followed, which was Lehigh University,” Northampton County Assistant DA Michael Weinert told reporters. “So, the moderator actually reached out to Lehigh to give them a heads up.”
Anand was arrested and charged with the falsification of records.
He soon after accepted a plea deal, admitting to one count of forgery, thus bringing a potential 10 to 20 year prison sentence down to a “slap on the wrist” requested by the school.
Lehigh also reportedly requested that Anand return to India.
In response, Weinert congratulated the local police force on the successful investigation.
“It was difficult to really verify these things,” he said. “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.”
