Anchorage scholar to plead guilty in student loan fraud

The allegations of fraud against Rachel Yould, 38, are extensive.

Prosecutors say she was a master manipulator who created a second legal identity for herself, invented fictitious jobs and wildly exaggerated her income as part of a scheme to win hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans.

At one point, one of her identities falsely claimed $1.7 million a year income to co-sign for a student loan to her other identity, prosecutors said in pre-trial filings.

To maintain her status as an Oxford University student so that she could continue to get loans, she forged documents from a Japanese university to say she was there conducting research for her Ph.D., prosecutors said.

Some of her student loans funded her business, set up through a complicated chain of offshore entities. Her employees thought the business was part of Oxford, when in fact it was being propped up by her loan proceeds, prosecutors said.

Yould had said she was innocent -- a legitimate student funding an expensive education. She was handling the debt until the student loan terms changed and her required payments skyrocketed, she said.

Yould had become a cause célèbre nationally for advocates against domestic violence since she was indicted a year ago. She claimed she was a victim who created a second identity with the federal government's blessing and went into hiding from a stalker. Yould and her supporters claim she has been victimized again by the federal criminal charges.

THE CHARGESYould was scheduled to go to trial next week in Anchorage but is now scheduled to change her plea on Thursday.

She is charged with nine counts of mail fraud and one count of wire fraud. Each count carries a maximum of 20 years in prison, although without any criminal history Yould is unlikely to get anything close to the maximum.

A separate case, that involves a five-count federal indictment on mortgage fraud around her purchase of an Anchorage condo, is still scheduled to go to trial in August.

Federal prosecutor Retta-Rae Randall said the rallying around Yould is another example of Yould's manipulation.

"Yould and her spin on events became the only source upon which people are drawing conclusions, making diagnoses, and taking actions. She is the sole historian," Randall wrote in a court document.

Randall said Yould tried to influence the outcome of the case through her connections in high places, including within the U.S. Department of Justice, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Truman Scholarship Foundation. She tried to coordinate a nationwide media campaign. In an e-mail to her supporters early last year, she wrote about contacting a public relations firm, managing fundraising on her behalf, and initiating a media campaign enlisting celebrity reporters.

BIG LOANS

Prosecutors say Yould -- also known as Rachel Hall, her birth name -- took advantage of low-cost student loans and private student loan lenders. They say that between 2003 and 2006 while she lived in Japan, she falsified documents to borrow $680,000 beyond what she was entitled to.

Her scheme? According to filings by prosecutors, she obtained a second Social Security number under a special program for victims of domestic violence, then misled lenders to believe her original identity -- Hall -- and the new identity -- Yould -- were different people, prosecutors say. She used distinctly different handwriting for each on loan applications. One customer service agent noted that she believed she talked to two different people in one phone conversation -- one represented herself as Yould, the other as Hall.

Yould had been a student at Oxford but the prestigious school cut her off in late 2006 because she hadn't turned in her doctorate thesis. Prosecutors say she stopped being a student long before that, a period in which she was getting student loans. She funneled the money to her Hong Kong bank account and instead played the stock market, started a for-profit journal and bought an Anchorage condo.

One falsified letter from a vice president at Keio University in Tokyo to Oxford University said Yould was a visiting research student with annual education fees of $155,000, prosecutors said in pre-trial filings.

She said one of her loan co-signers, her husband, Brett Yould, was an employee of her business, the Oxford International Review, earning a monthly salary of up to $36,000. Prosecutors say her husband never worked for the journal and never made that kind of money.

On one loan for Rachel Yould, she submitted phony pay stubs for Rachel Hall, her co-signer, saying Hall was employed by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies making $24,000 a month. Hall once worked as an unpaid research assistant for the institute but was never an employee and never drew that kind of salary. The lie secured Yould a loan for $240,000 from Sallie Mae.

She told her employees at Oxford International Review that the journal was supported by anonymous donors from Oxford University, when the school had nothing to do with the publication. She maintained a postal box on campus to help with the deception, prosecutors say.

ANCHORAGE STARYould moved to Japan around 2001. She had been the 1996 Miss Anchorage and an academic star who graduated from Bartlett High School, graduated from Stanford University, and won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford.

Is she lying about the domestic violence, allegedly by her biological father that occurred while she was growing up and in her early adult years? That's still unclear.

"The allegations of domestic violence, whether true or false, are not relevant," Randall wrote in one court document. Randall said the father was never charged with any crimes and Yould has never produced medical or police records, witness statements or other evidence that supports her story.

Alaska court records show that Yould applied for a restraining order in 2002 against a man named Robert Hall.

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Find Megan Holland online at adn.com/contact/mholland or call 257-4343.