A Mom, 48, Pleaded Guilty After Posing As Her Daughter In College For Years
“She even had boyfriends that believed that she was that age: 22 years old.”
If your partner was secretly a 48-year-old masquerading as a twenty-something, would you be able to spot it?
A Missouri woman has admitted to stealing her daughter's identity and living two years of her life as a college student, during which time she worked at a library, dated younger men and embezzled over $25,000.
Laura Oglesby, 48, pleaded guilty this week to social security fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Missouri. She faces up to five years in prison and has been ordered to pay $17,521 in restitution to the university that she duped, and must pay restitution to the daughter whose credit she ruined.
Authorities say she admitted to fraudulently applying for a social security card using her daughter's identity in 2016.
Oglesby got a driver's licence, enrolled in classes at a university and received student loans using the stolen identity, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
"Everybody believed it," Mountain View Police Chief Jamie Perkins told The New York Times. "She even had boyfriends that believed that she was that age: 22 years old."
"She had completely adopted a younger lifestyle: clothing, makeup and personality," Detective Stetson Schwien told Missouri news station KY3 in 2018, shortly after her arrest. "She had completely assumed becoming a younger person in her early twenties."
In 2018, police in Arkansas contacted Mountain View Police in Missouri about an identity fraud case involving Oglesby. The Mountain View Police traced her to a local library and discovered that she was working there while posing as a student.
Perkins said Oglesby told police that she was fleeing a domestic violence situation, although he did not confirm her story.
"She had lived that life for a couple of years and basically just ruined her daughter's credit," Perkins said.
Oglesby has not been sentenced yet.