Black intelligence - BlackFormer.com

After eluding authorities for nine years, a former Shoreline resident accused of elaborately developing false identities to gain entry to top universities and bilk the federal government out of thousands of dollars has been caught.

Federal marshals and police arrested Esther Reed, 29, Saturday at a Tinley Park, Ill., hotel where she’d been staying under an assumed name. Investigators tracked Reed to the Chicago suburb after she failed to appear in a South Carolina court on identity theft and mail fraud charges in September.

Reed disappeared from Washington in 1999, when she failed to surrender herself after being convicted of check fraud, said Sgt. John Urquhart of the King County Sheriff’s Office. Since then, she moved around the East Coast, Ohio and California using a series of aliases.

Unlike most identity thieves, Reed adopted her aliases completely, Urquhart said.

“This woman didn’t just steal identities — she assumed the identities of these people,” Urquhart said.

Reed was arrested in New York City while living under the name Brooke Henson, a Traveler’s Rest, S.C., woman who has been missing since 1999. According to the Secret Service, Reed enrolled in Columbia University as Henson after obtaining a high school equivalency degree and taking the SAT.

Authorities do not believe Reed was involved in Henson’s disappearance.

Urquhart said that, while living in New York, Reed posed as a chess master. Under other aliases, Reed attended Harvard University and a Los Angeles-area college.

Secret Service agents filed a warrant for Reed’s arrest after a Greenville, S.C., grand jury indicted her on identity theft charges, agency spokesman Malcolm Wiley said. Reed was placed on the Secret Service most wanted list after she failed to show up for court, and eventually appeared on the “America’s Most Wanted” television program.

According to the grand jury indictment, Reed is accused of racking up more than $100,000 in student loans while attending Columbia. She faces four felony charges related to her alleged use of Henson’s identity.

Urquhart said King County authorities have no reason to seek Reed.

“Our only interest in her was as a missing person,” Urquhart said. “The family is very relieved to know that she’s not dead.”