At 11AM on Friday would-be Yalie Akash Maharaj strolled out the front door of New Haven Superior Court a (nearly) free man. Akash raised $18,250 of the $31,591 he owes Yale University for scholarships acquired with forged documents. (Allegedly forged! Akash reminds at every chance, air-finger-quotey-things wiggling conspiratorially.) He now begins a five-year probation period with a zillion strings attached about work and community service and whatnot. Maharaj pleaded guilty to first-degree larceny, a felony. His guilty plea is part of a deal that has, for the time being, allowed him to escape felony forgery and violation of a restraining order charges. YDN coverage here.

If and when Akash pulls together the remaining cash, his probation will end. Until then, all contact between Akash and Yale University is strictly verboten: a campus-wide restraining order. Asked for comment, Akash rolled his eyes.

When you think about it, all I'm in trouble for is stealing English classes. It's not like I was running around with a little bag of money, like, Eeeee! [here Akash emits a high-pitched squeal and pantomimes cartoon bank thievery]

He then toed his way carefully around the campus perimeter, hopped a train, and went back to New York.

This may not, however, be the last we hear from the international man of mystery. Akash tells us he has something big and secret in the works, something about his career, or his future, or a cure for cancer! that he will unveil in two months' time. He may also appeal the felony conviction, but I really hope not, because I'm sick of staring at that snooty wine picture every day. Akash, if you insist on being in the news, could you at least send us a new picture? Please?

While some people pretend to go to Ivy League schools to hide their royal lineage, we here at IvyGate prefer our impostors with a bit more edge. Thankfully our favorite fake Yalie Akash Maharaj has obliged us!

When we last left Akash in spring, he was busy trying to save his social security number from our comment boards, but now I bet he wishes someone could steal his identity because he’ll probably be headed to prison very soon.

Akash recently plead guilty to the charge of larceny in the first degree and waits to be sentenced on September 5th. But he only forged transcripts! What did he steal? Oh, just a little over $30,000 in financial aid. And Yale wants it all back. In fact, according to the Connecticut Attorney General in the Yale Daily News, “The severity of Maharaj’s sentence will likely depend on the extent to which Yale receives restitution.”

In yet Akash seems to have taken some legal advice from Bobby Brown and DMX and attempted to make all this justice nonsense go away by just not showing up:

...Maharaj skipped another court date — what was supposed to be a hearing to apply for a form of probation that could have eventually wiped his criminal record.
But Maharaj, 27, did not show. His attorney, Glenn Conway, had told Maharaj he had to appear in court unless he was in a hospital. So, in Judge Richard Damiani’s words, Maharaj “conveniently” checked into one.
Visibly unsympathetic, Damiani ordered Maharaj rearrested...

After the jump: the legal proceedings might be coming to an end, but Akash is unfortunately not out of the woods.
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Our commenters aren't known for taking the high road. Our boards tend to devolve into a sort of "my school is better than yours but at least we can all agree that Cornell sucks" type mentality. But people, you ain't seen nothing yet. Gaylies extraordinaire Akash and Victor - or maybe just their campaign "surrogates" - are duking it out, JuicyCampus-style, on our comment boards. Despite all sorts ofpseudonums, most of the comments come from the same IP addresses, posting again and again. Both Victor and Akash claim they are not the posters, only to follow up their denials with juicy tidbits more or less proving that they are in fact Victor or Akash or close friends. Did Akash lie to get into Yale? Did Victor ruin his life? Who knows?

Highlights: "cc" calls Akash a "psycho-loser" and "midget," and writes with glee about how Akash will soon be "raped and beaten in prison for 25 years." "ha ha" responds, calling Victor a "cross eyed bipolar, trailor trash freak" and insinuates that Victor may have had sex with his uncle as well as underage children - and that his mom supposedly had an affair with an illegal immigrant. It only gets worse from there. In all likelihood, none of these things are true - but to see the horrific results of love gone awry is nothing short of incredible.

After the jump: the flame war continues. How about a cease-fire, guys? We'd happy to engage in some shuttle diplomacy.

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So, you know how some people say Skull and Bones isn't so powerful or evil anymore? Because if they were, Team Cazares would have squashed Akash Maharaj like a bug by now, right? Well, a few IvyGate commenters showed off their best creepily conspiratorial powers last night, managing somehow to get a hold of Akash's social security number and posting it all over our comment boards.

Under society-alluding pseudonyms like "munchingonyourbonelikeawolf" and "keystothebone," the commenters printed documents they claimed Akash sent to various education and government authorities. Some had different SSNs from others which made it seem like a hoax.-- until we got an email from Akash saying that at least one of them got it right, so could we please remove it from our website, kthxbye. He thinks Victor is behind it.

Since the comments all came from Yale IP addresses, the rogue commenters may actually have been so stupid as to not cloak their identities and will soon be shipped off to Guantanamo Bay or something. That, or the guy at the library who leaves his laptop unguarded during study breaks just got so screwed. Before last night, SSN-revealer "322" last commented a year ago, on our walrus moustache post.

Maybe Princeton's anti-anonymity brigade is on to something, after all.
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Sifting through background on Skullfucked: The Akash Maharaj and Victor Cazares Story, we find a strangely poignant scrap in the form of a movie review and more comment banter. From Akash's review of the Pedro Almodovar film Volver (published as a Facebook note in 2007):

Volver **** (best film of the year)

I have been called emotionally distant by any number of people and those who know me well know I can be very unsentimental - and yet I was profoundly moved by this film.

A number of characters ask the truth to be told, but then add, "Someday, you will tell me everything" the whole truth, the whole story is put off so that the community can reinvent it. Narrative creation is an act of recreation. Dead bodies don't stay dead but come back for their rewrite and their redemption, stories are added to and altered with time... Over and over, Almodovar refuses to see the story straight through but rather filters it through a kind of memory process. Memory isn't just what happened but what we think happened, and what we'd like to have happen. And so new voices are brought in to add their gossip, to rewrite or essentially, to return.

Poignant, coming from a man who, months later, would stand accused of a "narrative creation" of criminally fraudulent proportions, only to be undone by another "retelling," from an ex-lover to the authorities. Naturally, the lover-Akash's foil and rumored whistleblower, Victor-also makes an appearance on the note, with three film-buff-bantering comments at the onset of their relationship.

After the jump: Akash's complete Volver note and Victor's comments.

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Ever since full names broke in the scandal we shall henceforth call Skullfucked: The Akash Maharaj and Victor Cazares Story, we've gotten a tsunami-force wave of tips evaluating the boys' relative worth and/or loathsomeness. Consensus seems to be that Akash is sketchy but super smart and kinda cute. Were it not for that whole felony thing, he'd be a catch!

On the other hand, Victor (at right) has more enemies than Wharton has douchebags. Gawker published a damning email about Victor with several redactions; since we got a nearly identical email, we're guessing the missing parts are those featuring the breathless retelling of sexual encounters of such graphic and character-assassinating proportions that even Gawker won't touch it. When your enemies are more ruthless than Gawker is, you know you're in trouble.

A brief compendium of Skullfucked rumors:

victor cazares used akash throughout their relationship so that akash would buy him food (every day), clothes, books, train tickets etc. victor even stopped going in regularly to his job at la casa (the latino cultural center at yale) because he expected akash to take care of him.

victor did indeed claim to destroy akash's belongings and the yale police have the email and have advised akash to seek monetary compensation by suing victor in civil court. it is unclear though whether victor actually destroyed his ex's belongings or whether he was just lying so he could steal them. ... last i heard, akash was trying to press charges against victor for larceny and criminal mischief (regarding his belongings)

Both boys have blocked each other from their respective facebook profiles but there are still wall to wall messages that mutual "friends" like myself can view. It's fascinating how early in the relationship VICTOR seemed like the obsessive one, posting comments on Akash's wall over and over within seconds of each comment. ... It seems as if over time, Victor became more secure and then Akash went crazy. But in the beginning it was the reverse.

After the jump: Wall posts for Akash, with love from Victor. We discover that "Babel" is overrated and that Trader Joe's is the market of choice for depraved Yalies.

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A search engine-savvy reader notes that, among the three Akash Maharaj networked in Trinidad and Tobago is this one:

Another transfer? At first I tried to evaluate the picture against the other one, but then I remembered that the man is accused of forgery. A misleading Facebook picture or two is perhaps within the realm of possibility.

A New York Post article entitled "SKEEVY IVY SCAMMER: NYer Faked Way Into Yale and its $$: Probe" (when did NYP start sourcing headline-writing to 13-year-old girls on MySpace?) breaks the identity of Yale's mysterious scam artist. Gawker breaks a second identity via a web of rumors on our comment boards: Bonesman Victor Cazares is also rumored to be the gay lover who initially alerted authorities to inconsistencies in Maharaj's story.

Meanwhile, this 2006 Spec article offers a Moebius strip of imagined Maharaj history. Before claiming to be a Columbia transfer at Yale, he apparently claimed to be a Yale transfer at Columbia:

"Columbia has been disappointing in almost every way," said Akash Maharaj, who transferred to Columbia from Yale at the beginning of the year. By the end of first semester, he was ready to transfer back.

Since his arrival here in September, he says, pretty much everything has been going wrong. He says that the Core Curriculum is "old-fashioned and ridiculous", the school environment is "anonymous", and, though he loves New York City, he gets to do things around the city "only around once every two weeks, anyway."

Ironically, it was Maharaj's loss of anonymity-in the arms of a lover-that ruined him. Falsified identities can be lonesome that way.

Yale Daily News reports that a 26-year-old student "defrauded Yale University wholesale," faking records, transcripts, and major elements of his identity. After burning through $46,000 in financial aid, Yale tried to pull a hush job on the guy-whose name isn't in the articles-with a quick, quiet dismissal, but the alleged fraud sticking to his "not guilty" plea, Yale and the mysterious man will be airing their dirty laundry in court, starting next week.

The story has so many twisting elements, it reads like a daytime soap: Gay lovers' spat! Race-related unrest! Forgery, identity theft, mental instability! The defendant may have duped NYU, Columbia, and Yale with falsified transcripts and tales of charitable works in Sri Lanka (probably fake) and a childhood in Trinidad and Tobago (probably real). YDN indulges the byzantine plot here.

Equally distressing (read: disgustingly juicy) is the fact that he made it this far. Records suggest at least four years of financially-aided education, and while we understand that transferring credits can be a total bitch, that's gotta add up to at least one associate's degree in "Fraudulent Psychopath," right? YDN explores college-app forgery here, but really, all you need is this sentence:

The revelation that someone could infiltrate Yale shatters the mystique of the Ivy League as an impregnable bastion of the elite.

Raise the alarm! Our ranks have been broken! We'll follow this story as it unfolds; so far, my frantic Googling offers zilch; I can't even find stuff on the September charge.