(May 18) -- Instead of preparing for graduation, a former Harvard senior will spend the summer awaiting trial for allegedly conning his way into the Ivy League university with fraudulent documents and falsified credentials and duping the school out of $45,000 in grants.
Adam B. Wheeler, 23, was arraigned Tuesday on 20 criminal charges, including eight counts of identity fraud, four counts of larceny over $250 and seven counts of falsifying an endorsement. He was arrested after applying for the highly competitive Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships with materials he plagiarized from a Harvard professor, authorities said.
He was released on $5,000 cash bail and ordered to stay away from Harvard University, MIT, Brown University, Yale University, Phillips Academy in Andover, and McLean Hospital, all institutions authorities say played a role in Wheeler's case.
Josh Reynolds, AP
Adam B. Wheeler was charged with larceny and falsifying documents from Harvard University, MIT and Phillips Andover Academy.
Wheeler was indicted Monday, after allegedly faking high school transcripts and forging letters of recommendation in his application for admission to Harvard as a transfer student in 2007. Wheeler, of Milton, Del., claimed he was a straight-A graduate of the elite Philips Academy in Andover, Mass., earning a perfect 1600 on his SATs and going on to enroll at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Investigators said they have learned that Wheeler actually graduated from Caesar Rodney High School, a public school in Kent County, Del., and was a student at Maine's Bowdoin College for two years until 2007, when Bowdoin said he was suspended for academic dishonesty, according to The Boston Globe. His letters of recommendation from MIT were, in fact, signed by Bowdoin professors, and the College Board revealed that Wheeler's SAT scores were 1160 and 1220, investigators said.
Once at Harvard, Wheeler allegedly duped the university out of more than $45,000 in grants, scholarship and financial aid money, which Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr. said was awarded to him "based on lies and reproductions of other people's hard work.''
"This defendant seriously undermined the integrity of the competitive admissions process, compromised the reputation of some of the finest educators and educational institutions in the country and cheated those who competed honestly for what he fraudulently received,'' Leone said in a statement.
Wheeler was dismissed from Harvard in October, following an internal investigation and a disciplinary hearing that he declined to attend. After two years of blending in, Wheeler raised eyebrows with his application for Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships, in which he claimed he earned perfect grades throughout his college career and submitted a resume detailing numerous books he co-authored and courses he had taught, according to investigators.
"During the application review process, a Harvard professor read the defendant's ********** and was troubled by the similarities between the defendant's work and that of another professor," Leone's statement said. "When the Harvard professor compared the two pieces of work, it was clear that the defendant had allegedly plagiarized nearly the entire piece."
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