Y’all, this is f**king bonkers!!
A 48-year-old woman pretended to be her 22-year-old daughter — and got away with it FOR YEARS!
Laura Oglesby, a mother from Missouri, pleaded guilty on Monday to intentionally providing false information to the Social Security Administration so she could enroll in Southwest Baptist University, secure student loans, get a driver’s license, and date much younger guys! The momma used her estranged daughter’s identity to commit the fraud — and apparently had no pushback from anyone for years! They just all believed a middle-aged woman was a young adult! WHUT?!
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According to Mountain View Police Department Chief Jamie Perkins, who spoke with the New York Times on Thursday, Laura had a few suitors who believed her younger age. He said:
“She even had boyfriends that believed that she was that age: 22 years old.”
OMG men are so easy…
Oglesby was originally arrested for financial fraud and embezzlement of over $25K back in 2018. Arkansas police first began looking for her in 2017; eventually they reached out to Mountain View, about 40 miles across state lines, because they believed she might have been living there. Their hunch was on the money: authorities discovered her living under the fake name Lauren Ashleigh Hays. She even worked at a city library, Chief Perkins shared:
“She actually was employed here, which was kind of odd. And that’s how we figured out who she was.”
After being pulled over during a traffic stop, the woman initially denied being Laura Oglesby, but she quickly admitted the crime once they showed her proof they knew what she’d done. But she gave a good excuse for the identity change, the officer added:
“She was just running because she was in a domestic violence relationship, and she’d been running for years.”
Hmm. While they’re not denying that could be true — goodness knows they’re common enough — the cops aren’t considering it a good enough reason to lay off legal consequences, noting:
“We don’t know her life story outside of what she told us, but we know what happened here. She had lived that life for a couple of years and basically just ruined her daughter’s credit.”
According to investigators, she had received $9,400 in federal student loans, $5,920 in Pell Grants, and even $337 for books purchased at the university’s bookstore since stealing her child’s identity in 2016. Detective Stetson Schwien, who was the one to finally find her, told KY3:
“She had completely adopted a younger lifestyle: clothing, makeup, and personality. She had completely assumed becoming a younger person in her early twenties.”
This persona comes across in her mugshot, which was posted to Facebook in 2018 when she was first arrested. In the photo, Laura sports a grey jacket, a pink shirt, and a cat ear headband. Overdoing it a bit? Maybe?
Oglesby had even been living with local couple Avery and Wendy Parker, who were tricked into thinking she needed help rebuilding her life following an “abusive relationship.” They told the outlet in 2018:
“A woman in town had said that there was a girl who had had an abusive relationship and she was at the Christos House [shelter] and wanted to know if we could help her out, get her on her feet, get her started, mentor her and get her a fresh new life. We said sure, absolutely.”
How kind of them! We hate to see good people get fooled like this. Ugh.
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Even the Parkers thought the 48-year-old was a LOT younger than she was, they continued:
“She was a giddy, silly girl. She was 22 but she acted 17.”
Avery also stressed:
“I try real hard to see the 45-year-old Laura, so I can hate her. But all I can see is a 22-year-old Lauren, who I just wanted to help.”
His wife had one very empathetic message to share:
“If I could give her a message, I would just like to tell her that the people she hurt the most — we’re nothing — was her kids. She hurt her kids.”
Seriously. The poor daughter! Who knows how much this will permanently damage her credit and ability to get loans and go to school herself? (It’s unclear how many other kids Laura has, though we guess more than one given that comment.)
While Oglesby has yet to be sentenced, she could be facing five years in federal prison without parole. She already has to pay nearly $18K in restitution to Southwest Baptist University and her daughter.
Reactions?!
[Image via Mountain View Police Department]
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