Police believe nationally known con man fled from shack

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Nov 4, 12:00 AM EDT
By SADIE GURMAN
Associated Press


DENVER (AP) -- A longtime con man most famous for entering Princeton University in the late 1980s by posing as a self-taught ranch hand was arrested Thursday in Aspen, where he had been squatting in an illegally built shack on the side of a ski mountain in the tony resort town.

His arrest at the Pitkin County Library marked the latest chapter in a long history of fraudulent behavior by James A. Hogue, 57, who gave arresting officers a fake name before confessing his identity, Aspen police Detective Jeff Fain said.

The nationally known impostor was being held in the Pitkin County Jail on an outstanding Boulder County theft warrant, and police said he faces additional charges.

Hogue passed himself off as a high school student at age 26, said he was on the faculty at Stanford University to get a job as a running-class instructor in Vail, Colo., and lied his way into Princeton, among many other cons that landed him in prison more than once, The New York Times (http://nyti.ms/2fhIdnB ) wrote in a 1991 story detailing his exploits.

Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ASPEN_SHACK_CON_MAN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-11-04-00-00-27

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[Chicago1980]

1. DONALD!!!

donald...

[uppityperson]

2. What a wild story, thanks for sharing this

[calimary]

3. When I saw the title of the OP, I instinctively thought

"... cuz he had to go make another out-of-town stump speech."

[angrychair]

4. lol...I saw "nationally known con man"

My literal first thought was "trump". So funny.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. His white privilege

meant that no one felt it necessary or bothered to do a background check when he was hired (I know far too many over the years who were eventually found as frauds when someone actually checked the info they claimed on their resumes about previous employment and/or education).

From the NYT link in the OP -

[font size="1"]March 4, 1991[/font]
[font size="4"]Tracing a Devious Path to the Ivy League[/font]
[font size="1"]By JAMES BARRON with M. A. FARBER[/font]

Across the Ivy League in the spring of 1988, bleary-eyed deans poring over the usual stack of superlative-filled recommendations and stratospheric S.A.T. scores were intrigued by one application -- the one from the boy who said he had taught himself everything he needed to know while working as a ranch hand and sleeping under the starry Utah sky next to his horse, Good Enough.

Other applicants sent in laudatory letters from high school teachers and coaches who vouched for their head-of-the-class qualifications. But Alexi Indris-Santana's file contained only a note from the Lazy T Ranch in Utah, saying he had ridden with the best of them. Also in the folder were a few newspaper clippings about track meets he had won, and his own smoothly worded essay about why he wanted to attend an Ivy League school.

On campus after campus, puzzled admissions officers wondered how someone who claimed not to have set foot in a schoolroom since kindergarten could have scored 730 on the verbal section of the Scholastic Aptitude Test and 680 on the math -- far above the national average. But skeptics, if there were any, put aside their doubts. One Brown University administrator recalls that the dean of admissions "sat there with the file in his hand and said, 'There's something wrong with this file. I can't put my finger on it, so I guess we ought to take him.' "

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/04/nyregion/tracing-a-devious-path-to-the-ivy-league.html

Meanwhile, they are the first to question the credentials and birthplace of our first black President.

[kebob]

6. No Doubt a Trump Supporter

[hunter]

7. "Stratospheric" SAT scores... who knew?

Those are pretty common in my family and some of the groups I hang out with.

Maybe that's why I think SAT scores and most other kinds of standardized testing are useless. I had "stratospheric" scores on the SAT, and even higher scores on the tests I took to become a science teacher. Those didn't make me a good teacher. Teaching in a rough public school was the most stressful job I've ever had.

I quit high school at sixteen because I was bullied and physically abused there. I was "asked" to leave college twice. It took me nine years to graduate. During that time I had many temporary and part-time sorts of employment, everything from lab work, to moving furniture, to maintaining crappy student housing. Sometimes I was homeless. I'm not always fully functional in this society, especially off my meds, but even at my worst I never stole anything more than computer time and hot water from the people of California, and those with a wink and a nod from the gatekeepers. Anything else I needed I could find in dumpsters.

This guy stole tools and bicycle parts from his employer and he didn't get a "third strike" prison sentence. Yes, I do see some white privilege here.

I used to have a pretty good relationship with the campus and local police. I was never violent, I was always polite, and mostly I tried to remain invisible. I think the police regarded me as an amusing diversion from their usual sordid duties of drunk-and-disorderlies and domestic disputes. Had I not been white I'm pretty sure they would have hauled me off to jail, and that would have severely damaged any opportunities I had for success.

When I'm not doing well the first thing that flies out the window is my ability to judge my own mental state. It's a good bet this guy doesn't realize his own behavior is unusual. There's no telling if this guy is a Trump supporter or not, or even if he's aware of the election coming up.

I will say that Trump and anyone who is supporting him is in the basket of deplorables. There are too many mean ignorant racist people in this nation, and they all consider themselves sane.

[yellowcanine]

8. Trump escaped?