According to Northampton County court documents, four foreign students, all from Ghana, were detained in the United States for allegedly using forged high school transcripts to get into Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.
On accusations of forgery and theft of services, the students—Otis Opoku, Evans Oppong, Cyrilstan Nomobon Sowah-Nai, and Henry Dabuo—are presently being arrested at the Northampton County Jail. Preliminary hearings are scheduled for September 24 and the group was arraigned on September 9.
The Lehigh University Police Department (LUPD) Detective Lieutenant David Kokinda filed criminal complaints against three of the students on September 6, according to the university’s student newspaper. Evans Oppong, the fourth student, is the subject of an ongoing allegation that is being investigated.
The students allegedly submitted forged high school transcripts to the Lehigh University Admissions Office, inflating their grades to guarantee their admission to the university, according to the prosecution.
Court records show that while Dabuo and Sowah-Nai, who both began in 2023, received financial help totaling $129,244 and $127,213 respectively, Opoku, a student since 2022, received financial aid totaling $212,933.
After Jude Dabuo, Henry Dabuo’s older brother, submitted a transcript after being accepted to Lehigh for the coming semester, Vice Provost of Admissions and Financial Aid Dan Warner expressed doubts about its authenticity.
This sparked the start of the investigation. The document contained unusual annotations, formatting, and spelling mistakes that prompted the Admissions Office to cancel Jude Dabuo’s admittance and look into the qualifications of his younger brother. Subsequent investigations turned up similar inconsistencies in the other three students’ applications.
Currently, a $100,000 bail is being held for the four pupils.
Source: Graphic Online
