Adult woman posed as student
BPS says police alerted after she used a fake ID to enroll in high schools
Boston police are investigating after an adult woman used fake identification and paperwork to enroll in multiple Boston high schools this academic year, Superintendent Mary Skipper said in a letter to families at those schools Tuesday.
The woman attended the Jeremiah E. Burke High School, Brighton High School, and English High School, Skipper said. She used the district’s student transfer process and enrolled under multiple pseudonyms.
“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. “This appears to be a case of extremely sophisticated fraud.”
The district did not identify the woman or the apparent purpose of the fraud.
The only victim listed on a police incident report filed last week is the state, but a “human trafficking” box is checked off on the form.
School officials have not identified any cases where students or staff were harmed in connection to the woman’s enrollment, according to the letter. She is no longer enrolled and has been ordered to stay away from all Boston Public Schools facilities, according to the letter.
Patrick Murphy, a Boston criminal defense attorney not associated with the case, said that absent other information the woman was likely to face charges of felony forgery and identity theft — potentially multiple counts for enrolling at multiple schools. Typically felony forgery cases involve monetary gain, like in real estate cases, Murphy said, but that’s not required.
“She attempted to gain some sort of benefit from it,” he said. “I don’t know what the benefit would be.”
The woman could also face more serious charges, such as federal mail fraud, if she mailed documents to the schools, the attorney said. A lot will depend on unknowns such as the woman’s motives.
“I’m sure the authorities are looking at every possible way to prevent this from happening again,” Murphy said. “That’s an unusual case, that we don’t usually see coming through the courts, where someone is trying to get into the schools.”
A BPS staff member noticed problems with the woman’s paperwork on file and reported it to district leadership last week, Skipper said.
According to the incident report, staff at English High School called the police on Wednesday after noticing issues with the supposed student’s paperwork. Their curiosity was triggered when a man told them he was withdrawing his “daughter” because of bullying she had received and enrolling her at Brighton’s St. Columbkille Partnership School, a K-8 Catholic school.
“The school found it odd because [name redacted] was just enrolled on Thursday, June 8th, and just earlier in the morning they had begun to address the bullying,” the report reads.
The names of the suspects and school staff members were redacted in the report released to The Boston Globe.
The school staff was concerned there might be an issue with the student’s parental custody and asked the district for her paperwork, which indicated she had a Department of Children and Families social worker assigned to her.
One of the forms read, “Department of Children rind [sic] Families,” and the misspelling triggered further suspicion, prompting the school staff who called the listed phone number on the form. The number listed was incorrect, and when the staff reached DCF, there was no one working for the department by the name of the listed social worker.
At that point, the staff called the police. “As soon as BPS personnel identified irregularities with the student’s enrollment, the case was referred to the Boston Police who are now undertaking a criminal investigation,” Skipper said. “I am grateful to the BPS staff who caught this and quickly acted and to the Boston Police for launching an immediate investigation.”
According to the superintendent’s letter, investigators and school staff are reaching out to the families of students who may have interacted with the woman.
A spokesperson for the Department of Children and Families said the state agency has received a report and is investigating.
A handful of cases of adults enrolling in high schools pretending to be teenagers have been reported around the country in recent years, with varying motives. A Dallas man posed as a high schooler “to relive his basketball glory days” before entering an illegal relationship with a 14-year-old girl, according to a local news report. A 28-year-old woman attended a Louisiana high school this school year to learn English, according to a CNN story.