A 32-year-old woman was caught posing as a high school student in an effort to switch schools, according to reports.
The New York Post reported that the unnamed woman was caught after a man posing as her father informed administrators at English High School that he was withdrawing his alleged daughter due to bullying and would enroll her at St. Columbkille School.
According to the police report obtained by the Boston Herald, the school suspected there was a custody battle because the girl had only recently started attending English High School.
“Concerned there may be some sort of custodial issue with the parents, the school began to ask from the district all of the enrollment paperwork,” the police report read.
It was later discovered that the woman registered for classes at Brighton High School and Jeremiah E. Burke High School using fake names throughout the 2022–23 school year.
“I am deeply troubled that an adult would breach the trust of our school communities by posing as a student. This appears to be a case of extremely sophisticated fraud,” district Superintendent Mary Skipper said in a statement.
WCVB 5 also reported that the woman was working as a social worker for the Department of Children and Families until February this year.
“We do not have any evidence at this moment of any harm or risk to the young people, thank goodness,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu told reporters. “She definitely didn’t look 32,” an English High School student familiar with the woman told the outlet. “I wouldn’t have thought she was 32, but … dang, she was 32?!”
Adults posing as students has become a recent trend across the East Coast. Earlier this year, a 29-year-old woman was also caught pretending to be a high school student for four days in New Jersey in January.
The woman allegedly collected the phone numbers of various teenagers while attending classes, as well as attempted to arrange meetings with several kids off campus.
Meanwhile, a 28-year-old woman in Miami-Dade County, Florida, was accused of pretending to be a high school student in an effort to promote her Instagram account in 2021. According to reports, she was trying to make a point about the lack of safety precautions in schools.
