A former Anchorage Rhodes and Fulbright scholar plans to plead guilty to federal charges that she invested student loans in stocks and a business venture rather than her education.
The allegations of fraud against Rachel Yould, 38, are extensive.
Prosecutors say she was a master manipulator who created a second legal identity for herself, invented fictitious jobs and wildly exaggerated her income as part of a scheme to win hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans.
At one point, one of her identities falsely claimed $1.7 million a year income to co-sign for a student loan to her other identity, prosecutors said in pre-trial filings.
To maintain her status as an Oxford University student so that she could continue to get loans, she forged documents from a Japanese university to say she was there conducting research for her Ph.D., prosecutors said.
Some of her student loans funded her business, set up through a complicated chain of offshore entities. Her employees thought the business was part of Oxford, when in fact it was being propped up by her loan proceeds, prosecutors said.