Anchorage Daily News

She’s a Fulbright and Rhodes scholar who spent four years at Oxford, has a Ph.D., is a former Miss Anchorage, worked with Mother Teresa and was named by Glamour magazine as one of the most notable college students in America. On Thursday, a federal grand jury indicted her on 10 counts of fraud.

Investigators say Rachel Yould, 37, created a second identity to get two sets of student loans, using one of them to invest in a Smith Barney account and a private business.

But people who know the accused woman say she created a second identity to hide from a man who was abusing her and the bureaucratic complexities of doing that left her in a bizarre position.

A Bartlett High graduate, Yould now lives in Japan and appears, from a university Web site, to be a professor of media and government at Keio University.

“The U.S. Attorney’s office takes very seriously the crime of engaging in a scheme to defraud the institutions that are designed to provide loans for educational purposes,” said assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Feldis .

Prosecutors say in 2003, Yould obtained a second Social Security number under a special regulation of the Social Security Administration for victims of domestic violence and harassment. She then used the names Rachel Hall, her maiden name, and Rachel Yould and the two different Social Security numbers to obtain student loans from the Alaska Commission on Postsecondary Education, the Stafford loan program, and private loans from Sallie Mae Corp.

She used the name Hall to co-sign for student loans for Yould, and didn’t notify the lenders that the two Social Security numbers belonged to the same person, prosecutors say.

She also is accused of falsifying her income to the lenders and misrepresenting to Oxford University the types of loans it was certifying.

But Yould’s mother-in-law, Sherrie Yould, in a phone interview late Thursday, said the real story is far more complicated. Rachel Yould was stalked and in danger, she said.

She created a second identity to protect herself. “There was nothing to do but to go into hiding.”

Valerie Harris, a friend of Yould’s, said Yould changed her last name, got a new Social Security number and moved to Japan to hide. Harris said with the new identity Yould had no credit history and was running into hurdles. She called the Social Security Administration, got advice from there, and did what they told her to do, Harris said.

“The real kicker here is, there is no paper trail,” Harris said. She said Yould has been paying off her student loan. “This girl’s been a model citizen.”

Alaska court records confirm that Yould sought a restraining order against a man named Robert Hall in 2002.

According to previous media reports, Yould was an acclaimed academic star. After graduating from Bartlett in 1990, she went on to U.C. Davis, Stanford University and then Oxford University in 1997. She told a reporter at the time that she wrote a book of poetry at 17, had worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta helping AIDS patients and was honored by the U.S. Congress with a Congressional Gold Award.

Her employment has included interning at the White House and working for the U.S. Department of Defense, according to her resume posted online. She was Miss Anchorage in 1996.

According to the indictment, Yould moved to Japan in 2001 to do research toward her Ph.D. That year, she was told she had maxed out her lifetime borrowing limit of state-subsidized student loans, which was $60,000. In 2003, she maxed out her subsidized Stafford loans at $65,500. That’s when she got a new Social Security number and started applying for loans under that name.

Prosecutors say she provided fraudulent documents and statements to lenders, and did not inform lenders when she was no longer a student.

The scheme started in 2003, and Yould continued to apply for money until 2006, according to the indictment.

Feldis said he didn’t know if efforts will be made to extradite Yould from Japan should she choose not to return willingly to face the charges.

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

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