The cat is out of the bag when a man’s act as a Stanford student got exposed to the campus officials. Rather than finding an appropriate accommodation, a man falsely identified himself as William Curry and made himself comfortable living in the basement of Crothers Hall.
According to updates from Crothers Hall resident assistant (RA) Peyton Robertson ’24, the man pretended to be a Stanford sophomore from Birmingham, Alabama. He lived in the basement for weeks until he got caught in a robbery incident.
He received a stay-away order after he was discovered to have taken a television from the dorm basement. The man was left with a warning that if he returned to campus, he would be arrested.
Students living in the dorm said he communicated well with other residents and was let into the dorm regularly by compassionate RAs. “I was shocked because I had met him before. We had been baking brownies in the kitchen with a group of us and he walked in and introduced himself. We fed him brownies and then eventually he gave us a room tour of his room in the basement,” said Crothers Hall resident Olivia Roti ’26.
“It was shocking, just realizing that he lied to us,” Roti added. “We just went along with it, we totally believed him. We were panicking about being put in the Crothers basement next year.”
The impersonator was seen in a Stanford athletic backpack and maintained his identity as a member of the track team. Curry claimed that he was studying neuroscience on a pre-med track and had an Instagram account with a bio including “Stanford 25” and tagging the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation. However, Curry did not appear on a publicly posted roster of Coca-Cola scholars.
Curry pushed the limits too far. His secrets got out after the television in the basement of Crothers went missing. Residential staff confirmed in a message to the dorm Slack that the metal security cable holding the television had been cut and the television had been removed. The thief was in the basement and it was no one other than the impersonator.
He is not allowed to step foot on the campus again.
Source: https://stanforddaily.com/2022/10/28/imposter-student-caught-removed-from-crothers-hall/