Extension Student Nabbed for Web Fraud

A 23-year-old student at Harvard’s Extension School was arrested on Friday for allegedly running a complex real-estate scam that used made-up e-mail addresses and old bank accounts to defraud at least seven apartment-seekers out of thousands of dollars.

Friends at Harvard describe Linda G. Vaghar as outgoing and hard-working. She quotes Nietzsche on her thefacebook.com profile and was involved with the Harvard Democrats and the Institute of Politics.

But to those searching on Craigslist.org for an apartment in Cambridge, she was “Linnie,” “Lin,” or just “L.” Each persona came with its own e-mail address and sob story. Now Vaghar faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of two counts of larceny.

According to the police report, there are five known victims of the scheme, but The Crimson has located at least two more victims—including a Harvard undergraduate—who were cheated.

The scam went like this, according to police reports and interviews with victims: Vaghar lured people on Craigslist by offering an apartment for rent in Harvard Square—in most cases, her apartment at 20 Prescott Street—at an extremely low price, ranging from $300 to $500 a month.

Shannon S. Christmas ’04, who helped uncover the scheme, remembers searching Craigslist for a new apartment in Cambridge last September when he came across Vaghar’s offer. His graduate school dorm at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had become too cramped. Vaghar said that she was going to be working as a paralegal in New York and wanted to rent her apartment.

To Erin E. Cory, a teacher in Malden, Mass., Vaghar was a Harvard student taking a second semester off. The apartment she was offering was one at 1200 Mass. Ave.—an address at which Vaghar doesn’t even have an apartment—and the price was $300 a month.

Through various excuses, Vaghar then avoided showing the apartment in person, providing only links to pictures. But because of Vaghar’s low price, ideal location and appearance of trustworthiness, would-be renters agreed to send her the first and last month’s rent.

She cashed the checks immediately.

“Five hundred dollars in Harvard Square might get you a parking space, but not an apartment,” said Christmas, who was skeptical at first. But further research and a few e-mail exchanges with Vaghar convinced him to go for the deal. It didn’t hurt that he had 33 friends in common with her on thefacebook.

“She spent a lot of time hanging around undergrads,” said Cody Corliss ’03. “You’d see her around at finals clubs and bars. For an extension school student, she was really involved in campus life.”

Sold on the deal, Christmas sent her a check for $1,500, and planned to move in on Dec. 1.

As the move-in day approached, Vaghar sent a series of bizarre e-mails and then placed a frantic phone call to Christmas.

“She said her father had cancer and it was ‘near the end,’ and she started doing her crying routine—I thought it was real, but I later learned it was fake,” Christmas said. “She said that she was unstable and that because her father’s cancer had advanced, she ‘couldn’t even think about paying the rent.’”

He explained to her that she was essentially leaving him without a home, and didn’t have nearly enough time to find another place to stay.

“Can’t you just stay on someone’s sofa?” he recalls her saying.

Vaghar declined to comment for this story.

For other victims she made up stories about her mother or father having cancer or falling into a coma. Each excuse prevented her from vacating the apartment and left the renters without a place to stay.

Vaghar allegedly told another one of her victims, who would be identified only as Alison M., that she could not vacate the apartment because her mother had been hospitalized for cancer treatment.

When victims asked for their money back, Vaghar sent them checks from old bank accounts that she had already closed, often accompanied by an e-mail demanding that no further action be taken against her.

Both Christmas and Alison M. received their money eventually, though not without weeks of wrangling.

“Despite the fact that we received our money back we all still suffered a lot of stress,” Alison M. said. “I learned my lesson of trust the hard way.”

But Cory, the teacher from Malden, wasn’t so lucky: she estimated that Vaghar still owes her $900.

“I hope that she’s going to get all the help she needs, because I honestly don’t know what possesses somebody to scam so many people,” Cory said.

“It made me sick that this girl was scamming people out of their homes so that she could finance fancy clothes and parties,” said Christmas.

Vaghar was released on personal recognizance and posted a $40 bail on Friday, according to the Middlesex District Attorney’s office. Her pre-trial hearing is set for Feb. 18.

—Staff writer Reed Rayman can be reached at rrayman@fas.harvard.edu.