WASHINGTON – An assistant professor at Williams College and former Capitol Hill staffer last week was sentenced to 50 months in prison for a two-decade long series of identity thefts that took in several universities, the U.S. Department of Education, the Social Security Administration, and several banks and credit unions, including Stanford FCU and Wright-Patman Congressional FCU.
Ernest Moore, 52, used phony identities to obtain federally guaranteed student loans to attend the University of Southern California, Claremont Graduate University, George Washington University and Howard University, before working as a congressional staffer as an aide to Congressman Danny Davis (D-IL). Throughout that time he opened 90 different credit card accounts and borrowed more than $500,000, stiffing the issuers, including the two credit unions, for more than $460,000 in unpaid balances. He also owed the two credit unions thousands of dollars on personal loans.
Moore acknowledged that starting in 1985, he used a series of pseudonyms to borrow $301,000 to attend the University of Southern California, earn a master’s degree in public policy in 2004 from Claremont Graduate University in Pomona, Calif., and a doctoral degree in political science from Howard University in 2009. Moore also gained admission to George Washington University.
Starting in 2005, he began working for Davis, rising to senior policy fellow still using an alias. Opening congressional credit union accounts in the names of two people he claimed were married to each other, Moore then ran up $503,000 in purchases on 90 credit card accounts, leaving an unpaid balance of $469,000.
Moore also collected $13,257 in Social Security disability payments in an associate’s name.
Moore, who worked on sentencing policy and legislation to help nonviolent offenders reenter society, was a former Yale Law School researcher working as an assistant professor at Williams at the time of his arrest. His aliases include Bernard Glenn Moore, Ernest Bouvier-Moore and Tracy Glenn Cannady.
