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Times of India: A former Harvard student has been accused of fabricating a perfect record of academic achievement to get into the university and duping it of $45,000 in grants through false documents and recommendations.

Adam Wheeler, 23, joined Harvard in 2007 but lied on his application about having perfect grades academic record at Phillips Academy in Andover, which he did not attend. Wheeler, who also claimed to have studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been arrested and charged on several counts of identity fraud, larceny and forgery.

The New York Post reported that it wasn't the first time he has been accused of cheating. Wheeler was kicked out of Bowdoin College in Maine in 2007 for "academic dishonesty."

The student proceeded to submit bogus letters of recommendation from real Bowdoin professors and had also lied about having perfect SAT scores. At Harvard, Wheeler won the Winthrop Sargent Prize in English, the Hoopes Prize and a research grant worth a total of $14,000 allegedly on the basis of plagiarised writing, according to the Post.

In September last year, one Harvard professor finally grew suspicious after noticing that Wheeler's Fulbright and Rhodes scholarship applications claimed straight A's at Harvard, were full of "numerous books he co-authored, lectures he had given and courses he had taught," Middlesex county district attorney Gerald Leone, said.

This finally prompted an investigation.