ANCHORAGE, Alaska, April 15 (UPI) -- A former Fulbright and Rhodes Scholar and Oxford University doctoral candidate has pleaded not guilty in Alaska to student loan fraud, observers say.
Rachel Yould, 37, entered the plea Tuesday before a U.S. magistrate in Anchorage to federal charges she used a second identity to apply for subsidized student loans, even though she had reached her lifetime limit, allegedly using some of the money to start a business and boost her investment portfolio, the Anchorage Daily News reported.
A former Miss Anchorage, who worked with Mother Teresa in India and advocated for AIDS victims, Yould's friends and family contend she created the second identity with the approval of the government to hide from a stalker -- her biological father, whom she says abused her as a child and raped her as an adult, the newspaper said.
California domestic violence counselor Valerie Harris told the Daily News she thinks Yould, who now teachers at a Japanese university, was caught in a bizarre bureaucratic tangle and no deliberate fraud was intended.
