In an interview, another one of the students told a story about her encounter with the man that paralleled the first student’s story. She also said the man first approached her in January at the Coop.

“The first time we met, he seemed like a friendly person with similar interests,” said the student, who added that the man was dressed “preppy, like a professor.”

One month later, the same student ran into the man again while walking through the Square.

Then the man asked her for her e-mail address— which she gave him—because he wanted to e-mail her information about Ponder Heart, a movie in which he claimed he had acted.

“At first I thought it was a more innocent interest,” the student said. “But then I got an e-mail from him with all of this flattery.”

In his e-mail, the man referred to himself as her “actor writer friend from Harvard Square.”

He called her “very attractive with a good personality” and went on to say, “I wish I knew you better because Mel Brooks invited me to come see The Producers.”

Another student said she encountered a man outside of the Coop in mid-February, whose description she recognized from the e-mails.

When the man approached her and tried to guess her ethnicity, she said she informed him that “the police had been notified about him” and that his behavior “disturbed” the women he had previously approached.

—Staff writer Jenifer L. Steinhardt can be reached at steinhar@fas.harvard.edu.