Conning Harvard

When Adam Wheeler got into trouble at Bowdoin, he transferred to Harvard, saying he was an MIT student. When trouble started at Harvard, he attempted to transfer to Yale and Brown. Along the way, he came very close to getting Harvard to endorse his application for a Fulbright Scholarship.

After two years of blending into campus life and racking up academic prizes and tens of thousands of dollars in grants and scholarships, Wheeler allegedly upped the ante: The 23-year-old senior applied for the prestigious Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships last fall using falsified credentials, including a fake transcript and work he plagiarized from a Harvard professor, said investigators.

If you’re going to con a college, you’ve got to aim high, I always say.

• Adam Wheeler
• cons
• Harvard