Lots of people lie about their age to pretend they’re younger than they are, but one 48-year-old mom from Missouri is now facing jail time for pretending to be her 22-year-old daughter for more than two years. Laura Ogelsby stole her estranged daughter Lauren Hays’ identity so she could enroll in college, secure student loans and date younger guys. She’s been caught in the act and is now facing jail time for the fraud.
It all started in 2016, when Ogelsby applied for a Social Security card in Hays’ name. From there, she took on her daughter’s identity and started living as the 20something. The mother, who was from Arkansas and was 43 at the time, applied for a Missouri driver’s license in her daughter’s name and went on to enroll as a student at Southwest Baptist University. She took out student loans in Hays’ name and even started dating men in their early 20s, who had no idea she was two decades older than she claimed to be.
Ogelsby received thousands of dollars in financial aid under Hays’ name and even took a job at a public library, where she was known as Lauren Hays. But her scam came crashing down when police in Mountain View, Missouri, were contacted by authorities in Arkansas who were onto her financial aid fraud. “She had completely adopted a younger lifestyle: clothing, makeup and personality,” explains Detective Stetson Schwien with the Mountain View Police Department. “She had completely assumed becoming a younger person in her early 20s.” When she got caught, Ogelsby admitted to the fraud and now she’s facing five years in prison without parole after pleading guilty to one count of intentionally providing false information to the Social Security Administration.
Source: New York Post
