4 Ghanaian Students Arrested Over Alleged Forgery Of High School Transcripts To Enter US University

4 Ghanaian Students Arrested In The US For Transcript Forgery. Authorities In The United States Have Arrested Four Ghanaian Students For Forging Their Transcripts.

4 Ghanaian students arrested in the US for forging of their high school transcripts. These Ghanaian students were arrested for forging their transcripts to secure admission to Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, United States.

The students, Evans Oppong, Otis Opoku, Henry Dabuo, And Cyrilstan Nomobon Sowah-Nai are now facing charges in the United States for forgery and theft. The authorities have set a $100,000 bail for each student.

The University begun investigation when they saw issues with the application from Jude Dabuo (Henry Dabuo’s younger brother). His younger brother was set to begin his studies at the same university this year. Per documents released by the court, Dan Werner, who is the Vice Provost of Admissions and Financial Aid for the university, first reported high concerns to the University’s Police department on August 23rd 2024. He noticed that the errors in Jude’s transcript were the same in his brother’s.

Upon further investigation, the Lehigh University officials found similar issues in their transcripts. This made them initiate a wider review of all submitted transcripts from all Ghanaian students in the institution.

Preliminary hearing for the four Ghanaian students have been scheduled for 24th September 2024. Three separate criminal complaints were filed on September 6th 2024 against Henry Dabuo, Cyrilstan Nomobon Sowah-Nai and Otis Opoku by the University’s detective, Lieutenant David Kokinda. The accused students have been charged for submitting grades higher than that in their official transcript. According to the district’s court’s office, the complaint filed against Otis Oppong is still being processed.

The Admissions Office discovered concerning format, markings, and spelling errors on Jude Dabuo’s transcript, leading them to question its validity,” according to the court records disclosed by thebrownandwhite news (related to the school).

Oppong, who has been a student at Lehigh since 2022 has received financial aid amounting to $212,933.30. Both Henry Dabuo and Sowah-Nai who also joined the University later on in 2023 has also received financial aid amounting to $129,244 and $127,213.70 respectively. According to state prosecutors, these students forged their documents in order to influence their acceptance rate and also receive huge sums of financial aid packages.

The University’s official confirmed that, they made proper investigation upon realizing similar issues with Henry and Jude’s transcripts. Hence, they reached out to their high schools in Ghana for their official transcripts. The submitted transcripts from these students and that of the ones received from the school were not the same. “The forged transcripts were materially different from the original”, according to the report.

Upon the arrest of these students, a GoFundMe page was created in support of the four students on September 15th 2024. The case of these Ghanaian students has sparked controversies and raised high conversations regarding the vetting processes for international student admissions. The integrity of US financial aid packages for international students was also questioned.