‘Ivy League Impostor’ in the News Again

James Hogue, a con man who drew national attention after spending more than a year as a Princeton undergraduate in the early 1990s, was back in the news last month: He was arrested in Colorado, where authorities said he was illegally building a shack on Aspen Mountain.

Alumni might remember meeting Hogue under a different name: Alexi Indris-Santana, a member of Princeton’s track team who claimed to be a self-taught ranch hand who, before arriving on campus, had slept outdoors for a decade. Hogue, then 32, was arrested in 1991 on a fugitive warrant from Utah. It turned out he had enrolled under different names at two universities, and served time in a Utah prison for possession of stolen property. Since his time at Princeton, Hogue has faced theft charges multiple times.