MEDFORD, Mass., April 20 (UPI) -- An illegal immigrant who defrauded university and federal programs of more than $200,000 blames his actions on a man who recruited him to be a sex slave.
Arijit Kumar Chowdhury, an Indian man who stole a co-workers identity while studying engineering at Texas A&M, said he was coached in defrauding the school and the U.S. government by a retired doctor who made him his "personal concubine," the Boston Herald reported.
Chowdhury told a federal judge Dr. Dale Barber coaxed him into stealing scholarship money to attend Barber's alma mater, Ohio's Oberlin College, where he excelled in a pre-med program. He was later accepted at Tufts Medical School, where half of his tuition was covered by scholarships. He graduated in the top third of his Tufts' class.
Chowdhury ran into trouble when his medical license was rejected because the man he was impersonating, Steve Valdez, had been convicted of statutory rape in Missouri.
"He used up several hundred thousand dollars of financial aid that could have gone to people who belonged in this country,'' said U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Tauro Tuesday, "and I view that as a serious offense."
