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September 22, 2006 > News > Man faked student status for over a year

Man faked student status for over a year

By Beko Binder | Thresher Editorial Staff

A 20-year-old Houstonian who pretended to be a Rice student for three semesters was arrested at Baker College last week.

The Rice Police arrested David Javani Vanegas Sept. 13 for criminal trespass and an outstanding traffic warrant and was remanded to Harris County Jail. Vanegas admitted to RUPD officers that he had been eating at Hanszen/Wiess Servery, attending classes and sleeping at Baker College.

RUPD Chief Bill Taylor said Vanegas would attend large classes where he could not be picked out and convinced students to let him sleep in their rooms by telling them that he lived off campus but was too tired to drive home. Vanegas also frequently claimed to have forgotten his ID so students would let him into buildings and help him get food.

“He admits to getting food from the servery and getting places to sleep by deception,” Taylor said. “His idea was that the worst that could happen to him is that he would get warned for trespassing.”

Sergeant Gary Spears, one of two officers who made the arrest, said Vanegas initially lied to RUPD about his status as a student.

“[Vanegas] claimed that he was a Rice student,” Spears said. “He told a tall tale about his family being an internationally wealthy family and how he had to attend Rice under a fake name, which is why we would find no record of him on any Rice database.”

Spears said the officers got Vanegas to confess by taking him to Baker College Master Luis Aranda. When Aranda did not recognize Vanegas and the police dispatcher could not find any record of him, the officers made the arrest.

“[Vanegas] said that he applied to Rice and was accepted but couldn’t attend,” Spears said. “He said that it would break his mother’s heart if he didn’t attend Rice, so he carried out this ruse for three semesters, showing up here every day.”

Taylor said in addition to the trespass charge, RUPD is trying to get the District Attorney’s office to press theft of services charges. Vanegas could face felony charges if it is proven that he stole more than $1,500 in room, board and tuition.

“We will work with Housing and Dining to determine the values [of the services],” Taylor said.

Sid Richardson College senior Daniel Rasheed made the call to RUPD.

Rasheed, who transferred to Rice from the National University of Singapore in Fall 2005, said he was friends with Vanegas.

“[Vanegas] used to eat lunch with [my group of friends] probably daily for the past year and maybe longer,” Rasheed said. “I just joined Rice last year, and he started coming to Rice about six months before I joined. Whenever we went out we usually went out with him, like to the cinema or various concerts and stuff. He was an integral part of our group.”

Rasheed said he became suspicious because Vanegas never had an ID card, never studied and did not have the class selection of a political science major, which he claimed to be.

“[My suspicions] have been off and on for probably six months or so,” Rasheed said.

Rasheed said he confronted Vanegas after investigating his Facebook profile — Rasheed and a friend discovered that the e-mail address Vanegas used to create the account was not his.

“I asked him point blank, ‘Do you go to Rice?’” Rasheed said. “He said ‘yes.’”

Rasheed and his friend asked Vanegas to prove that he was a student by showing his ID card or logging into ESTHER.

“Eventually it came to the point where we said, ‘Look David, just tell the truth or we’re going to call the police,’” Rasheed said. “[Vanegas] said ‘I swear I’m a Rice student.’ We asked him if he would mind if we called the police to verify that he was a student, and he said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ Then I placed the call.”

A similar episode occurred in 2002 when a non-Rice student, Rodrigo Montano, obtained a Rice ID card, slept on campus and began practicing with the track team. Montano was exposed after a month and charged with criminal trespass.

Rasheed said even though Vanegas lied about being a student, he was well-liked and supported by his peers.

“[Vanegas] really is a good guy at heart, and he was loved by a lot of people at Rice,” Rasheed said. “Even though all the evidence pointed to the fact that he wasn’t a Rice student, [there were] a lot of people who couldn’t believe … that he wasn’t a student.”

Rasheed said he did not expect there would be any lasting consequences for Vanegas when he called RUPD.

“I just wanted to know the truth,” Rasheed said. “I just thought that they’d be like, ‘OK he’s not a Rice student.’”

Taylor said RUPD will focus on education at the colleges to prevent similar incidents.

“I don’t know that it’s [RUPD] that needs to do the preventing,” Taylor said. “It’s more the students and the people in these colleges that need to be more aware of who is and who isn’t a student. An observant student picked this up. We would never have picked this up, because he looked like, acted like, lived like a student.”

End of article

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