Former Alaskan beauty queen and Rhodes scholar, Rachel Yould, was sentenced to nearly five years in prison and ordered to pay more than $700,000 in restitution [in September] after pleading guilty in a peculiar case of fraud and double identities.Federal prosecutors indicted the Oxford University Ph.D. candidate last December on felony charges of mail, wire fraud and making false statements to influence a bank. The 38-year-old Yould, born Rachel Hall, had claimed her father sexually abused and stalked her and allegedly took on a new identity under a Social Security Administration program that aims to help rape and domestic violence victims hide from their abusers.
There is a longer Jeffrey Toobin piece in the New Yorker on this peculiar story but you have to subscribe to read it.
She's definitely not my relative.
Sad that such a good program was abused by this woman that just wanted to get more loans, like a professional student or something. These programs are ripe for abuse with liars, so that the real people that need help will not be able to get any assistance when the program is terminated due to fraud.
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