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Ironically, as easy as a scam as many make it seem, there is hardly any excuse for folks not being exposed. While in college my neighbors and friends across the hall had an assigned roommate in their midst. We lived in university apartments (only for students). GED, as we ended up calling him, was a phony. He never graduated from high school and as it turns out, did not take classes at Purdue, but did somehow manage to get student loans and fake class schedules for the whole school year.

We discovered his fraud early in the year in casual conversation when I asked him about what he was studying. He claimed to be in the flight program at Purdue. I got excited because I had taken private pilot lessons and asked him what he was training in and how much flight time he had. First of all, unbenknownst to me, Freshman do not fly in their first semester, usually. He stumbled over what kind of plane he was training in and I knew immediately. Anyone who has ever taken a training flight knows what plane they flew in. When pressed he finally decided it was a Cessna but didn't know what model. I asked him how many sets were in it. He said four. I stated right then and there, "You have never flown a plane have you." He got upset and left the apartment.

His roommates were flabbergasted and went looking for books, classwork or something. They found a G.E.D. study book and nothing pertaining to actual piloting studies, hence his nickname, GED.

The kid kept up the ruse all year. He left the apartment for "classes" on schedule, spent time studying, claimed to have tests, etc. Somebody actually found a way to check, and discovered that he was not registered in any classes at Purdue University. But he somehow fooled even his parents. They came for visits a couple of times that year and apparently told them how classes were going.

Talk about spooky. It was an eye opener. I expect to see him someday in the news, probably as a phony doctor or lawyer. I sometimes wonder what he is doing today.