Seven new alleged victims have stepped forward in a real estate scam in which a former Harvard Extension School student has been accused of stealing tens of thousands of dollars from more than a dozen victims.

Since The Crimson first wrote about 23-year-old Linda G. Vaghar’s arrest on Jan. 12, the number of alleged victims involved has doubled, and some have reported that Vaghar continued corresponding with those victims even weeks after The Crimson reported her arrest.

Vaghar’s alleged scam involved listing her Cambridge apartment for rent on Craigslist.org, convincing interested renters to pay her the first and last month’s rent, and then at the last minute making up sob stories to back out of the deal. The scam left victims struggling for months with a trail of excuses and bad checks in an effort to recuperate their money.

Vaghar—who, according to friends at Harvard, frequented finals clubs and the undergraduate social scene—is no longer enrolled at the Extension School, according to Dean of Students and Alumni Affairs at Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education Christopher S. Queen.

“We are following her court case closely,” Queen wrote in an e-mail.

Vaghar was arrested on Jan. 7 and has been charged with at least two counts of larceny, each of which carries a maximum penalty of up to five years in prison. Her pre-trial hearing is scheduled for Feb. 18.

Vaghar could not be reached for comment for this story.

Police reports and interviews with victims suggest that Vaghar’s plot was more extensive than The Crimson first reported on Jan. 12, and that she frequently changed her persona and story.

To Roger Cheng, a third-year student at Harvard Medical School (HMS), Vaghar was an intern at a local law firm offering her apartment for cheap because she was headed to Yale for a joint JD-MBA program. To Theo Vanderzee, a 26-year-old consultant, she was a paralegal from Brooklyn going to New York University Law School next year. And to others, she was an undergraduate at the College.

Vaghar would offer an apartment for as low as $300 a month to several people at the same time. She told three people that they were each moving in to the same apartment on Nov. 1, and three that they were moving in at the beginning of December—all of whom had already sent her checks for $900 to $1,500, they said.

As the move-in date approached, victims said Vaghar would craft a story explaining why she wouldn’t be able to let them lease the apartment.

Fadi Skieker, a student at Emerson College, said Vaghar told her that her mother was sick and her father was dead; Vanderzee said that he was also told that her father had died. And one woman affiliated with HMS, who wished to remain anonymous, said that Vaghar told her that her father had Parkinson’s Disease.

But, the HMS affiliate wrote in an e-mail, she later “met with [Vaghar’s] brother, mother, and spoke with her father on the phone, the entire family is alive and out of the hospital.”

In the ensuing struggle to get back their money, some victims said they have been paid back, but most said they have yet to be repaid in full.

Evidence recorded in police reports also suggests that Vaghar may have confused which story she had given to each prospective renter.