Woman faces more charges in ID theft
Associated Press
Thursday, April 10, 2008

GREENVILLE, S.C. --- A woman who authorities said used stolen identities to dupe an Ivy League college into admitting her faces new federal charges, according to documents filed Wednesday.

A revised indictment by federal prosecutors provides more details about how authorities think Esther Elizabeth Reed was able to fool people for years.

Ms. Reed had a relationship under a false name with a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point, convincing the cadet's mother to write a recommendation for her to go to Columbia University. She also created fake store receipts on her computer and returned items for refunds, according to the indictment.

Ms. Reed, of Townsend, Mont., faces additional identity theft and fraud charges for stealing the identities of six people, prosecutors said. A message left Wednesday for her attorney, federal public defender Lora Collins, was not immediately returned.

Starting in March 2001, Ms. Reed juggled the six false identities to attend California State University at Fullerton and Columbia University, according to the indictment.

She told people she earned her living as a chess champion and told a professor that she had to change her name because she was in the witness protection program and convinced the educator to write a recommendation to Columbia University, prosecutors said.

Ms. Reed attended the school for two years, beginning in August 2004, using the name of Brooke Henson, a Travelers Rest, S.C., woman who has been missing for nearly nine years, to get student loans.

Authorities said they caught up to Ms. Reed in New York in July 2006, where she was using Ms. Henson's name. Investigators said she insisted she was Ms. Henson and even answered some personal family questions correctly. But she disappeared when asked to take a DNA test, according to the indictment. She was arrested Feb. 3 in Chicago.

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