Feds Chase Alleged Ivy League ID Fraudster

Nov. 12, 2007— -- The U.S. Secret Service has received nearly 50 tips in the past week regarding the whereabouts of a young woman who has evaded authorities for months since stealing the identity of a missing South Carolina woman to apply to two Ivy League universities and obtain $100,000 in student loans.

In a federal indictment unsealed last week, Esther Reed, 29, was charged with allegedly stealing the identity of Brook Henson -- a resident of Traveler's Rest, S.C., who went missing eight years ago -- and using it to apply to for a passport, credit cards and the federal loans.

Soon after the indictment was unsealed, authorities ran Reed's image on the long-running TV program America's Most Wanted, leading to the greatest influx of leads on Reed's location since she was first found to have stolen Henson's identity in 2006.

"They'll take the information from America's Most Wanted and determine if three or four of the tips are all coming from the same city," said Clark Brazier, an investigator in the Traveler's Rest Police Department, who has been looking for Brook Henson since the then 20-year-old went missing July 4, 1999.

Secret Service spokesperson Kim Bruce would not confirm where the majority of those 40 to 50 tips had come from because "the case is still under investigation."

Investigators believe Henson is most likely dead but were given a false hope in May 2006 when a Columbia University graduate student alerted authorities that a woman claiming to be Henson had applied to work for her as a housekeeper. After an Internet search, the grad student learned that Henson was a missing person.

"We don't believe Reed had anything to do with Brook's disappearance," Brazier said, "but we need to find her to clear her."

Brazier said Reed has also used the names Natalie Fisher and Natalie Bowman in 2004, around the time she was enrolled at the Harvard Extension School in Cambridge, Mass.

According to the indictment, in May 2004, under Henson's name, Reed was accepted to Columbia University. The following year, Reed allegedly received a duplicate of Henson's birth certificate in the mail, adding mail fraud to the federal charges against her.

"In her application, she said she was home schooled, her mother was dead and she was estranged from her father. She did everything she could to appear not to have a past," said Brazier. "You think someone would have said, 'This all sounds a little strange.'"

Both Harvard and Columbia confirmed acceptance of a student using the name Brook Henson. The colleges, like most educational institutions in the United States, don't routinely do identity checks on applicants.

"Colleges receive massive outside documentation and generally have 12 years of prior documentation proving who someone is. You'd virtually have to land from Mars not to have that sort of record," said Barmak Nassirian, spokesperson for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

"There is no reason for someone to whip out an ID to prove who they are, and colleges don't find the need to run checks," he said.

Investigators believe Reed, who is originally from Montana, learned about Hensen and her disappearance from news reports and possibly parlayed a relationship with a Vermont state trooper to get additional information about Hensen, including her Social Security number.

Reed may have received some minor plastic surgery, Brazier said, "but we can't show a strong relationship that payments have been made to a particular clinic."

Ironically, Reed herself had long been considered a missing person. According to a family Web site setup to find Reed, she, too, had been missing since 1999. Her whereabouts were unknown until 2006, when she was caught allegedly using Hensen's ID.

No Profile for ID Thief

Experts on identity theft said that ID hijackers come from all segments of the population, and that Reed's age and gender did not make her particularly unique.

"There is no accurate profile for an identity thief," said Sheila Gordon, director of victims' services at the Identity Theft Resource Center. "This is their job; they love the rush and the money. Just because she looked innocent doesn't mean she was."

Gordon said using a false identity to apply to college was rare but not unheard of, and the greatest number of people to be victimized by identity crimes were college-aged.

"Identity theft occurs most often among 18- to 29-year-olds, and it is common for it to occur on college campuses. Typically, though, we're talking theft of credit cards, not applying to schools," she said.

Gordon also said that thieves will look through news stories or obituaries to find recently deceased people around the same age to steal their identities.