A 32-year-old woman faces charges that she falsified paperwork to attend three Boston public high schools for an entire academic year, according to officials and records.
A Boston Public Schools staff member this month noticed discrepancies in the woman’s student paperwork on file and contacted Boston police, according to a letter district Superintendent Mary Skipper sent to parents June 20.
The woman falsified paperwork to register as a student and attended three schools under different pseudonyms, Skipper said in the letter.
Detectives found several falsified documents in the woman's bedroom that gave authorities "probable cause to believe" she falsely represented herself to enroll in Boston Public Schools, according to a police incident report.
The woman used forged documents from the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families that were signed by a person whom the agency had no record of employing, according to the police report.
“I am deeply troubled that an adult would breach the trust of our school communities by posing as a student,” Skipper said in a statement. “This appears to be a case of extremely sophisticated fraud.”
The woman faces charges of forgery and uttering false writing, according to a criminal complaint.
She has not been arrested, Boston police said.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the woman had an attorney who could speak on her behalf, and contact information for her couldn’t be found in public records.
The woman is a former employee of the Department of Children and Families, NBC Boston reported. The Public Health Department confirmed that the Board of Registration has opened an investigation.
It isn’t the first incident of its kind in recent months.
A 28-year-old woman and her mother in Louisiana were arrested this month after an investigation found the daughter allegedly posed as a 17-year-old student at a high school. In January, a 29-year-old woman in New Jersey was arrested after she allegedly spent four days posing as a high school student.
