Woman stole daughter’s identity to get loans and attend college, US says

She seemed like a typical college undergraduate, with student loans, boyfriends and a job. But according to prosecutors, she also happened to be a woman in her 40s who had used the Social Security card information of her estranged daughter to get a driver’s license, enroll in a university and obtain financial aid.

For about two years, Laura Oglesby, now 48, pretended to be in her 20s and used her daughter’s name, said Chief Jamie Perkins of the Mountain View Police Department in Missouri.

“Everybody believed it,” Perkins said. “She even had boyfriends that believed that she was that age: 22 years old.”

On Monday, Oglesby pleaded guilty to one count of intentionally providing false information to the Social Security Administration, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri.

Oglesby could face up to five years in federal prison without parole. A sentencing date has not been set. Under the terms of her plea agreement, Oglesby must also pay $17,521 in restitution to Southwest Baptist University in Missouri and to her daughter Lauren Ashleigh Hays.

In total, Oglesby received $9,400 in federal student loans, $5,920 in Pell Grants, $337 for books purchased at the university’s bookstore and $1,863 in finance charges.

Social Security fraud and identity theft are crimes that can be “a very, very common kind of issue,” according to Nikos Passas, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University in Boston. From April 1 to Sept. 30, there were more than 270,000 allegations of Social Security fraud, of which more than 167,000 were categorised as impostor schemes, according to a federal report.

In some cases, parents unlawfully applied for loans using their child’s name, without their child knowing.

By pleading guilty, Oglesby admitted that she had fraudulently applied for a Social Security card in January 2016 and later used it to apply for a Missouri driver’s license. She also admitted that in 2017 she used the Social Security information to enroll at Southwest Baptist University and obtain financial aid.

Oglesby and her lawyer did not immediately respond to calls Wednesday requesting comment.

Her story unravelled in August 2018, after the Mountain View Police Department was contacted by authorities in Arkansas. They were searching for Oglesby, who they said had stolen Hays’ identity in that state in 2017 to commit financial fraud and embezzle more than $25,000. Authorities in Arkansas told the Mountain View police that they believed that Oglesby had been living under the fake identity in Mountain View, Missouri, a city about 40 miles north of the Missouri-Arkansas state line.

Mountain View police investigated and learned that Oglesby was living there and working at a city library, Perkins said.

“She actually was employed here, which was kind of odd,” Perkins said. “And that’s how we figured out who she was.”

Police then pulled her over, and she initially denied that she was Laura Oglesby, Perkins said, but once they showed her proof that they knew who she was, she admitted it.

“She was just running because she was in a domestic violence relationship, and she’d been running for years,” Perkins said Oglesby told police. “We don’t know her life story outside of what she told us, but we know what happened here.”

Mountain View police then arrested Oglesby on the bench warrants from Arkansas, Perkins said. Her case in Missouri encompassed allegations of federal crimes in both states. “She had lived that life for a couple of years and basically just ruined her daughter’s credit,” Perkins said.

Hays did not respond to calls Wednesday requesting comment.

In a statement Tuesday night, Southwest Baptist University said that it had “cooperated fully with the investigation.”

“We were saddened to learn about the situation,” the university said. “Our prayers are with all involved.”

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