
The girl who conned the Ivy League - Fixnum
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/31770765/the_girl_who_conned_the_ivy_league/6
======
mhartl
"The girl who conned the Ivy League...

...gained admission to three universities — including _continuing-ed_ programs
at Harvard and Columbia."

I assume by "continuing ed" they mean the Harvard Extension School and its
Columbia analogue. From extension.harvard.edu:

    
    
      To take courses at Harvard Extension School, you simply register.
      No application is required.
    

Never let the truth get in the way of a good headline.

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PieSquared
An interesting comment from the article: "From the genius, to the anxiety,
through the social awkwardness, Esther Reed is a classic case of Asperger's
Syndrome! Anyone who has lived with family members who have this condition, as
I have, should be able to instantly recognize it. The clues are all there. Her
father was a "shy and reclusive man" who had his family living out in the
woods isolated from society. There is the source of her autistic spectrum
disorder; she probably inherited it from him. She is not amoral as one person
previously commented, but rather, as Esther admitted, she didn't realize her
actions would hurt others. Again, this is classic Asperger's -- the inability
to put yourself in someone else's shoes, the lack of empathy, the self-
centered egotism resulting from an inability to generate a theory of mind,
i.e. see things from someone else's point of view or understand how what you
might do or say would affect the other person. Esther had personal problems a
normal person would have been able to handle by confronting and facing her
family and expressing her feelings to them and if necessary, just openly
leaving to start over, i.e. without running away in the way that she did --
making her paper existence vanish -- and without snapping and acting as she
did. People with Asperger's try to hold it together but often snap and act
out. In children, it is tantrums. As an adult, Reed snapped and impulsively
grabbed a co-worker's purse -- not the act of a genius criminal, since
obviously the suspicion would fall on co-workers. She could not handle
pressure and personal problems a normal person would have been able to handle
without Esther's extreme behavior. Even as a child, she had a
hyperresponsivity to stress as described by her teacher which was echoed in
her adult life when she became completely dysfunctional when stressed at
Columbia and on the run. Ironically, her defense attorney was right, but
apparently he didn't have a clue as to the correct diagnosis."

~~~
ardit33
Actually she sounds like a clear case of a sociopath.

Aspies lack EQ, but not necessary empathy. Sociopaths lack empathy altogether,
and will result to destructive actions to get what they want with no regard to
people around them, or sometimes, even themselves.

~~~
chrischen
It seemed to me that she was genuinely concerned--at least somewhat--about
minimizing her damage to others. She did rationalize that choosing a missing
girl's ID probably wouldn't be that bad.

 _"No one would be hurt by the theft, she reasoned, as long as she was careful
not to rack up debt. "I always thought, mistakenly, if there was no financial
loss, there was no harm," she says."_

So it seems her inability to recognize her damage to others was more problem
in rationale than understanding of empathy.

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kam
The original link goes to the last page.

First page:
[http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/31770765/the_girl_who...](http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/31770765/the_girl_who_conned_the_ivy_league/)

~~~
w1ntermute
Even better - the print version:
[http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/31770765/the_girl_who...](http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/31770765/the_girl_who_conned_the_ivy_league/print)

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dangoldin
I'm surprised she didn't just go to another country and go from there - I'm
not sure how easily other countries would be able to trace her back to the
missing people in the US.

Worst case she could have started off as an illegal immigrant - it seems with
her resourcefulness and intelligence she could have done well.

~~~
Herring
Well, then you wouldn't be hearing about it.

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Mz
It seems to me the fascination with this type of story (and it's not the first
I've seen here) is the element of remaking ourselves. A lot of famous people
got famous under a stage name: John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison;
John Mellencamp became famous as John Cougar; Julie Newmar was born Julia
Chalene Newmeyer. On this site, the man behind Mixergy took the name Andrew
Warner because his ethnic name was an obstacle to business success. Many
people also go by "handles" on various online forums rather than their real
name and plenty of people have nicknames that their close friends use for
them.

I suppose one lesson to learn here is that there is a right way and a wrong
way to remake yourself. And that assuming a new identity does not
automatically prevent problems from following you.

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tungstenfurnace
>To survive these daily onslaughts, Esther put on her familiar mask of haughty
confidence and switched on her emotional autopilot, mimicking social
interactions while feeling nothing

Hmm, that summarises about 50% of social interactions generally.

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darien
Not surprising that she was discovered and arrested. The whole point of a
missing person's list is to work as an alert system.

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gorbachev
The most striking thing about this story to me is how this girl ended up being
suspected of being Public Enemy Number One.

That truly says something about the world we live in these days. Sad.

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gnosis
This reminds me of:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P._Burdell>

also see:

[http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/29787673/the_boy_who_...](http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/29787673/the_boy_who_heard_too_much/print)

and

<http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments/4446/>

~~~
jimbokun
My first thought was

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale>

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joe_the_user
_"Investigators had never encountered anyone like this mysterious young
woman..."_

Really, only because they hadn't read about the cases of classic "hackers":
Kevin Mitnick, Kevin Poulson, ...

Fading between assumed identities is a pretty common scheme in my reading,
though perhaps less common in reality.

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ComputerGuru
Wow, what a terrible layout!

If anyone here isn't using Readability, this would be a good time to start:
<http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

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RiderOfGiraffes
Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1054299>

