US News

SKEEVY IVY ‘SCAMMER’

A man claiming to be a Columbia student duped Yale University into enrolling him and then bilked it out of thousands in financial aid before being outed – by his gay Ivy League lover, authorities say.

Akash Maharaj, 26, had been enjoying spring semester 2007 at Yale – even copping a prestigious literature prize there – after lying on his admissions application, according to the Yale Daily News and the school. Maharaj allegedly told of being a straight-A student from Columbia and waved a bogus letter of recommendation from one of Yale’s own profs.

But the alleged scheme came tumbling down last June, when his Yalie lover filed a harassment complaint against him.

The beau said Maharaj had threatened to kill him when he tried to get the unstable student admitted into a Manhattan psych ward.

The lover later wound up telling a Yale professor that he had doubts about Maharaj’s identity, prompting an internal university investigation that culminated with fraud and larceny charges against Maharaj in the fall, the school newspaper said.

In addition to allegedly doctoring his application, Maharaj reportedly swiped $31,750 in financial aid from Yale, as well as more than $14,000 in federal aid and loans and $900 from a federal work-study program.

The suspect, a native of Trinidad and Tobago, fled to New York after his brother, who lives in Manhattan, posted his $20,000 bond, the paper said.

Relatives told The Post he was living in Brooklyn, awaiting a court date in New Haven next week.

“He did what he thought was right. Something happened between him and his boyfriend, and that is what caused all of this to happen,” the suspect’s sister-in-law said in Manhattan.

Maharaj told the Yale paper that the only thing he lied about on his application was his age – because he didn’t want to be older than classmates.

His time at Columbia was unclear, although records indicate that he lived in one of its dorms, Lerner Hall, for at least a few months in 2005.

He told the Yale paper that he attended Columbia for two years, and his application indicated he was straight-A – while a court affidavit indicates none of that is true.

A student by his name is quoted in a Columbia Spectator story in March 2006 as saying he had transferred to Columbia from Yale at the beginning of the year. He then rips Columbia and threatens to “transfer” to Yale.

It’s unclear whether he also may have passed himself off as an NYU student.

A Yale English professor who was concerned about how the university was handling the scandal told the Yale Daily News, “This is bigger than you could possibly imagine.”

Additional reporting by Leonardo Blair

kate.sheehy@nypost.com