Man Arrested for Pretending to Graduate from Harvard

On September 17th, Seoul police arrested a man for defrauding his fiancee out of nearly $50,000 after he claimed that he had graduated from Harvard Medical School. Starting in 2007, the man, whom the police identified by his last name Seo, began posting photos online of himself wearing a fake Harvard Medical School white coat. Seo even studied medical terms on his own so that he could fool doctors into believing his back story. The recent arrest happened after he became engaged to a young woman under false pretenses, even going so far as to say that he was close with the children of chaebol businessmen, had American citizenship, and promised to take his fiancee to America after their marriage. He accepted large sums of money from her family in preparation for his married life while in reality, he had never been overseas or graduated from high school.

The original picture the man uploaded to his social media account, showing himself wearing a fake Harvard  Medical School coat.

The original picture the man uploaded to his social media account, showing himself wearing a fake Harvard Medical School coat.

Article from Yonhap News:

‘He said he was a Harvard University doctor’…in reality, just a middle school dropout

On September 17th, the International Crime Investigation Bureau of the Seoul Police Department reported that they had arrested a 31-year-old man with the last name of Seo under suspicion for defrauding a woman out of money via falsifying his educational background. Seo, who had always dreamed of becoming a doctor, manufactured a doctor’s white coat and fake professor’s business card with the logo of the Harvard Medical School. Since 2010, he began creating a story about being affiliated with Harvard. Seo traveled to a university hospital lobby where he had a picture taken of himself wearing the white coat. Seo then uploaded the picture onto his social media account homepage. He also studied medical terminology on his own in order to be able to speak more naturally with doctors, going so far as to join a group of foreign medical students for a volunteer trip to the countryside.

Comments from Daum: 자유인:

If he was motivated enough to learn medical terms on his own, then he could have turned that energy to at least getting a university degree, ke ke ke ke.

웃기는세상:

Con artists…this country’s parasites…They know nothing about morals or compassion…Those who have suffered because of them all know the feeling.tsk tsk tsk

극복:

He’s a pro just like the Rat and Chicken who fool this country. [The ‘Rat’ and ‘Chicken’ are references to former President Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye.]

김동찬:

There is Ms. Park [Park Geun-hye] who graduated from Sogang University [a highly ranked school] and does’t know anything about her major. The politicians in power right now, the Blue House, they are all cheating us… He’s innocent compared to that.

우야다:

When there are so many vain women out there obsessed with appearances, of course jerks like this are going to show up…

하버드:

Just as much of a cheapshit con artist as Tablo, who claimed he dropped out of the second year of elementary school because he couldn’t memorize his multiplication tables, ha ha ha.

하버드:

‘whatbecomes’ [the name of a famous netizen who led the Tablo investigation online] caught these cheats who made up records from American universities: Chun Doo-hwan’s son and Lee Myung-bak’s daughters (claiming they attended Penn State and Juilliard), Tablo, Sean Lim (two months of summer camp at Stanford University), Park Jeong-hyeon (Columbia University continuing education courses) Insooni’s daughter (Stanford continuing education), Kim In-hye (Juilliard), Hong Jeong-wook, Hwang Sang-min, Lee Joon-seok (Harvard continuing education courses), Roy Kim (claimed to be going to Georgetown University after dropping out of high school, then said he was taking a semester off when they caught him in the lie). If it hadn’t been for ‘whatbecomes’, then Korea would have been ruined by now by all of these cheaters. Now we have people going to American universities without ever taking the SAT, faking diplomas. Do you think Korea is a pushover?

이우:

Someone got to be president by cheating, so just give the guy a break and see it as something cute~

우스터:

Those women must have been just as badly ignorant. They should’ve known better after talking to him for a while.

벗:

He became a self-made man only with a junior high school diploma—He’s still not as bad as a real doctor who wrote false medical reports for money from a murderer-

yoyo:

That bastard or that bitch, all the same.

threegates:

That’s some motivation, ke ke ke ke. Not everybody can go and do volunteering. —

Menescal:

Society is also responsible when a smart person like this turns into a con artist. Get that man immediately into the Blue House.

그린라이트:

You should have spent that time studying, you cheater.

청춘의 창:

Hey, he didn’t just trick women, he also fooled doctors when he went along on their volunteering trips. What is this insult against women in the comments? Is this how low our country has sunk? People who always insult women are no better than some bastard who claims to have graduated from Harvard! There’s no accounting for the level of intelligence in this country. It’s because of things like this that our country has the highest level of inequality between men and women among all developed nations, tsk tsk.

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