ID-Scam College Student Gets 5 Years

A college student who with her boyfriend stole the identities of friends and neighbors was sentenced Friday to five years in prison and ordered to pay more than $100,000 in restitution.

Jocelyn Kirsch, a former Drexel University student, and then-boyfriend Edward Anderton used the money for expensive salon visits, exotic vacations and fancy dinners.

Federal guidelines called for a prison sentence of 70 months, but U.S. District Judge Eduardo C. Robreno credited Kirsch for her apparent remorse and for her July 14 guilty plea to aggravated identity theft and other counts.

Kirsch, 23, and Anderton acknowledged stealing the identities of friends and neighbors in the Philadelphia area in 2006 and 2007 to net more than $116,000 in goods and services.

The scheme unraveled when an employee at an upscale salon told police that a check for Kirsch's $2,250 hair extension job had bounced. About the same time, a neighbor of the couple told police a package she did not order had been sent to her.

Police released photos showing the two posing in matching red swimsuits by a luxury hotel pool and kissing near the Eiffel Tower.

Anderton, a 25-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate originally from Everett, Wash., is to be sentenced Tuesday.

Kirsch's defense attorney, Ronald Greenblatt, sought a lesser sentence, arguing that Kirsch suffers from mental problems that contributed to her criminal actions, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

"She is so clearly mentally ill," said Greenblatt, telling the judge that Kirsch made up stories about herself and her background in a manifestation of serious psychological problems.

She told people that she had violet eyes because she was of Lithuanian descent, when she was really wearing purple contacts, he said. She claimed she was an Olympic-class pole vaulter, when she was not, the Inquirer reported.