Four Ghanaian foreign students have been detained in the United States for allegedly forging high school transcripts to obtain entrance to Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University, according to Northampton County court documents.

Otis Opoku, Evans Oppong, Cyrilstan Nomobon Sowah-Nai, and Henry Dabuo, the pupils, are being detained in the Northampton County Jail at the moment due to allegations of forgery and theft of services. 

The group is awaiting preliminary hearings scheduled for September 24 after being charged on September 9. 

According to the school newspaper, on September 6, Lehigh University Police Department (LUPD) Detective Lieutenant David Kokinda filed criminal complaints against three of the students, which resulted to the arrests. Evans Oppong, the fourth student, is the target of a complaint that is currently being investigated.

The students allegedly submitted forged high school transcripts to the Lehigh University Admissions Office, inflating their grades to guarantee their admission to the esteemed private research university, according to the prosecution. 

Court records show that while Dabuo and Sowah-Nai, who both began in 2023, received financial help totaling $129,244 and $127,213 respectively, Opoku, a student since 2022, received financial aid totaling $212,933.

The investigation got off after Jude Dabuo, Henry Dabuo’s older brother, who had been accepted to Lehigh for the coming semester, presented a transcript that raised doubts about its validity, according to Lehigh’s Vice Provost of Admissions and Financial Aid, Dan Warner. 

The document contained unusual remarks, formatting, and spelling mistakes that prompted the Admissions Office to cancel Jude Dabuo’s admission and look into the qualifications of his younger brother. Subsequent investigations turned up similar errors in the other three students’ applications.

Presently, a $100,000 bail is being used to release the four pupils. There is currently no appointed attorney for their case as of Monday. 

Friends have started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for their defense, which includes attorney bills, commissary costs, and a reduction in bail. 

As per the page, Opoku and Oppong met the requirements of having a GPA of 3.6 or above to be listed on Lehigh’s Dean’s List in the previous semester. 

On the case, neither the LUPD nor representatives of Lehigh University responded more. After raising $9,075 toward its goal of raising $40,000, the GoFundMe campaign was put on hold and later resumed with a $300,925 target.

BY: APPIANIMAA MERCY