Crime & Justice

Grown Woman Who Posed as Teenage Student Missed Her High School Days: Lawyer

SENIOR CLASS

Hyejeong Shin was unmasked as an adult woman after spending a week at a New Jersey school.

Photo showing the front of New Brunswick High School in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Photo taken from Somerset Street.
Mr. Matté/Wikimedia Commons

A 29-year-old woman who enrolled in a New Jersey high school did so because she was lonely and missed the welcoming environment she enjoyed as a teenager, according to her lawyer. Hyejeong Shin spent a week posing as a 16-year-old student at New Brunswick High School before school administrators allegedly realized she’d given a forged birth certificate. The Rutgers University grad pleaded not guilty in court on Monday after being indicted by a grand jury for providing a false government document and hindering her own prosecution. “At no time was anyone or any student in danger and this entire case is more about my client wanting to return to a place of safety and welcoming and an environment that she looks back on fondly and nothing more,” her lawyer, Darren Gelber, said.

Read it at ABC 7 NY