An Indian student in the US was deported after he did this…✍️
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00:00A 19-year-old Indian student pulled off a very structured fraud by his own admission
00:06and made his way to a US university.
00:09But then he indirectly exposed himself on Reddit.
00:12I have built my life and career on lies and fraud, read the title of the anonymous post
00:18that Aryan Anand made on Reddit.
00:20He detailed how he used fake documents, right from his marksheet to even his father's fake
00:26death certificate to find the place at the Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.
00:31At the end of his post, he wrote,
00:33I don't know what I'm doing is wrong or right.
00:36It's basically wrong morally, I know.
00:38But I haven't had a single problem till now.
00:40But still, I'm scared something very bad would happen in my life very soon if I keep on doing
00:46these things.
00:47It turned out to be a prophecy that upturned his life.
00:51Aryan started his story from class 10.
00:53He said this all started when the 10th board exams were cancelled.
00:57He took science in class 11 with the hope that he would crack JEE or appear for competitive
01:02exams.
01:03But then he realized he wasn't interested in studying a lot.
01:07He detailed how he used to watch horror movies all night while his parents thought he was
01:12studying.
01:13He wrote that when he did try to study, he couldn't understand anything in physics and
01:17chemistry and only got a little bit of maths.
01:21Eventually, the idea of studying abroad reeled him in and he started to research how to apply
01:25for colleges and what to write, what documents to submit.
01:29In the process, he did not study for class 12 boards.
01:32It took him months to realize the very detailed plan that he had come up with to get admission
01:37in a foreign college.
01:38He was sure that he wanted admission only with full scholarship.
01:42He started with editing the mark sheets of classes 9 to 11 that he had on him.
01:47And then, to convince the college that he would be a good fit there, he got Chadjee
01:52BD to write a cover letter for him.
01:54He faced rejections at several colleges, but he also found acceptance in some colleges.
02:00But then they were not giving him full scholarship and he was looking for a college that would
02:04cover the cost of his stay and his tuition and his travel and everything.
02:09That's when Lehigh University came into the picture.
02:13They were offering him full scholarship except meals.
02:16He wrote that he could have afforded the cost for the meals for a year, but he did
02:20not want to take any money from his parents because he wanted freedom at all costs and
02:26he did not want them to pay for anything at his college.
02:29So, he decided to convince the college that he lost his father to cancer.
02:34He told the college that his mother was going to receive half the salary that his father
02:39used to get as pension.
02:41The college agreed to cover his meal costs as well.
02:44They now offered him a package which was covering his housing, tuition, meals, and
02:50even one round-trip ticket to India every year.
02:53So, he reached the U.S. in August 2023 without spending a single penny, he wrote.
02:59Aryan said he considered starting afresh and studying seriously for the exams that were
03:04held in college.
03:06But then he found that he was not interested again in studying, so he started cheating
03:10on his exams and getting a perfect score.
03:13But eventually, he realized he needed more pocket money to survive there, so he edited
03:18his transcript to make it look like he was a third-year marketing student and then he
03:22secured an internship for $1,500 a month.
03:27After spending a whole year there without getting caught, Anand posted all the details
03:32of his plan on Reddit and that post led to his deportation from the U.S.
03:37He posted on a subreddit called btechtards in February 2024.
03:42The moderator of this subreddit was a 19-year-old from Faridabad and he told The Indian Express
03:46that he felt it was the morally right thing to do to expose Anand's plans because he had
03:51been a JEE aspirant himself and he knew how tough it was for students to appear in competitive
03:56exams.
03:57While the moderator of the Reddit channel could not find out who the original poster
04:01was, he found out that Anand went to Lehigh University by taking a look at his page.
04:07He reached out to Lehigh University, telling them about Anand's post and then the university
04:13conducted its own investigation into the matter and confirmed that the student who had posted
04:18on Reddit was in fact Anand.
04:20This revelation spelled doom for Anand who was arrested on 30th April.
04:25He was charged with forgery, tampering with records or identification, theft by deception
04:30and theft of service.
04:32On 12th June, Anand pleaded guilty to one count of forgery.
04:37The university had only one condition that Anand would have to be deported to India and
04:42they would not charge him for the US$85,000 that they had lost on him.
04:47Had the university not decided to let him go on his deportation, Anand could have had
04:52to face a prison term of 20 years in the US.