At Harvard, Wheeler won a Hoopes Prize as a junior, English department awards, and a David Rockefeller International Experience Grant—all using plagiarized essays. His deceits were uncovered in the fall of his senior year at Harvard, when he applied for Harvard’s nomination for the Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships and was caught turning in an essay plagiarized from English Professor Stephen Greenblatt as his own work.

Alerted that he was under suspicion, Wheeler quickly left Harvard. But he did not stop his frauds.

He applied to Yale, Brown, Stanford, and a maritime program at Williams College, as well as internship programs at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital and the magazine The New Republic, claiming on all those applications that he was a Harvard undergraduate. Stanford and Williams accepted him as a transfer student.

He was arrested in May 2010 on 20 felony and misdemeanor counts including identity fraud and larceny—for the $45,806 in grants, prizes, and Harvard financial aid which he received during his time as an undergraduate at the College.

—Staff writer Xi Yu can be reached at xyu@college.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Julie M. Zauzmer can be reached at jzauzmer@college.harvard.edu.