A 48-year-old mother from Missouri used her estranged daughter's name to obtain financial aid, enroll in college and even get a driver's license.
Laura Oglesby pretended to be in her early 20s for nearly two years, according to Chief Jamie Perkins of the Mountain View Police Department in Missouri.
Oglesby plead guilty to one count of intentionally providing false information to the Social Security Administration on Dec. 6, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri.
“Everybody believed it,” Chief Perkins said. “She even had boyfriends that believed that she was that age: 22 years old.”
She could face up to five years in federal prison without parole, and must pay $17,521 in restitution to Southwest Baptist University in Missouri and to her daughter Lauren Ashleigh Hays. Oglesby does not have a sentencing date set yet.
The mother received $9,400 in federal student loans, $5,920 in Pell Grants, $337 for books purchased at the university’s bookstore and $1,863 in finance charges.
Oglesby admitted to fraudulently applying for a Social Security card in January of 2016. She later used it to apply for a Missouri driver's license, and again in 2017 to enroll at Southwest Baptist University and obtain financial aid.
The Mountain View Police Department was contacted by Arkansas authorities in August 2018 as they were searching for Oglesby. The Arkansas authorities said she stole Hays’ identity in that state in 2017 to commit financial fraud and embezzle more than $25,000. They told Mountain View police what they suspected and that Oglesby was living in Mountain View, MO.
Mountain View police then learned that Oglesby was in fact living in their town under her daughter's identity and was working at a city library. Police eventually pulled her over at a traffic stop, and after trying to continue the lie, Oglesby admitted her real identity and was arrested.
“She actually was employed here, which was kind of odd,” Chief Perkins said. “And that’s how we figured out who she was.”
"She was just running because she was in a domestic violence relationship, and she’d been running for years,” Chief Perkins said Ms. Oglesby told the police. “We don’t know her life story outside of what she told us, but we know what happened here.”
Related
Related
