A 35-year-old man has been charged with fraud attempting to steal money from the University of Connecticut.
Dickson Alorwornu, who also goes by the name Dixon Al, a citizen of Ghana residing in Greenwich, was tried this past week and received guilty verdicts on multiple counts of fraud.
Alorwornu was found to have used fake social security numbers and emails from two Connecticut residents to submit two non-degree applications to UConn, according to a press release by The United States Attorney’s Office.
College students know that applying and attending a university is no cheap process. Alorwornu, who was not a college student at the time, was not going to pay out of his own pocket; instead, he resulted in using three stolen credit accounts to cover the $62,000 price tag.
After committing this fraudulent act in late 2017, authorities started to catch notice when Alorwornu withdrew these aliases from UConn in the beginning months of 2018.
Alorwornu was intending to make it seem like these two “students” were no longer interested in attending classes at the Storrs campus. He then requested a full refund which was approved and tens of thousands of dollars were transferred into bank accounts that were under his name.
Despite these criminal acts, Alorwornu was not arrested by authorities until five years later in 2023.
UConn was not this fraudster’s only target.
Many leads including IP addresses and emails led investigators to believe Alorwornu was trying to exploit Central Connecticut State University, Missouri State University and the University of Nebraska-Omaha, according to an article by the New Haven Register.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Coronado and Chang will be the prosecutors in the case and sentencing is currently set for Feb. 19, 2025.
