Rachel Yould, Ex Alaska Beauty Queen, Gets Nearly 5 Years for Identity Fraud

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (CBS/AP) Former Alaskan beauty queen and Rhodes scholar, Rachel Yould, was sentenced to nearly five years in prison and ordered to pay more than $700,000 in restitution Friday after pleading guilty in a peculiar case of fraud and double identities.

Federal prosecutors indicted the Oxford University Ph.D. candidate last December on felony charges of mail, wire fraud and making false statements to influence a bank. The 38-year-old Yould, born Rachel Hall, had claimed her father sexually abused and stalked her and allegedly took on a new identity under a Social Security Administration program that aims to help rape and domestic violence victims hide from their abusers.

No criminal charges were ever filed against her father. And according to federal prosecutors, Yould didn't use her new identify for refuge, but instead, she used it to defraud lenders out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan money that she reportedly used to play the stock market, purchase a condo and launch a business.

However, Yould contends that she used the money for her studies.

In a 2 1/2 day sentence hearing, prosecutors revealed detailed information that proved Yould fabricated pay stubs and W-2 statements to support several of her loan applications. She was also accused of forging letters from academics to gain more student loan money, according to prosecutors.

On Friday U.S. District Judge John Sedwick concluded that Yould was smart enough to know that she was breaking the law, regardless of her past or the incorrect advice she claimed she received from federal bureaucrats.

Sedwick then sentenced Yould to 57 months in prison, reported the Anchorage Daily News.

More on Crimesider.
December 28, 2009 - Rachel Yould Story: Is Former Beauty Queen a Sex Crime Victim or Big Money Scammer?