James Hogue

Hogue was raised in a working-class family in Kansas City, Kansas and graduated from Washington High School in 1977.[1]

Hogue attended the University of Texas at Austin in the 1980s but left without a degree.[1] He also attended community college.[2] In the late 1970s, he was a student at the University of Wyoming before dropping out when he didn't perform well on the cross country team.[3][4]

In September 1985, Hogue, now 25 years old, stole the identity of a deceased infant and enrolled as a student at Palo Alto High School as Jay Mitchell Huntsman, a 16-year-old orphan from Nevada.[5] On October 7, 1985, Hogue entered the Stanford Invitational Cross Country Meet.[5] Hogue ran far ahead of the field and won the race, but did not report to the officials' table, arousing suspicion.[5] Jason Cole, a reporter covering the event for the now-defunct Peninsula Times-Tribune, uncovered Hogue's identity theft, and Hogue left town.[6]

In 1987, Hogue applied to Princeton University, using the alias Alexi Indris-Santana, a self-taught orphan from Utah, where he was then living. Hogue's application materials claimed that he had lived outdoors in the Grand Canyon, raising sheep and reading philosophy books.[7] Princeton invited Hogue to attend in the fall of 1988, but he deferred admission for one year, telling Princeton his mother was dying.[3] In reality, Hogue had pled guilty to possessing stolen bicycle equipment, and had been sentenced to five years in prison.[4]

Hogue served nine months before being paroled from Utah State Prison in March 1989.[4] Having also received a financial aid award from Princeton, he immediately left for the college, in violation of the terms of his parole.[1] For the next two years, he lived as Santana, was a member of the track team, and was admitted into the Ivy Club, one of Princeton's most exclusive eating clubs.[5]

His real identity was exposed when Renee Pacheco, a former classmate from his days as "Jay Huntsman" at Palo Alto High School, recognized him. She contacted reporter Jason Cole, who exposed Hogue a second time. On February 26, 1991, Hogue was arrested in class and charged with forgery, theft, and falsifying records.[8] In October 1992, Hogue pled guilty to third-degree theft for taking more than $22,000 in scholarship money and was sentenced to nine months in jail.[8] Hogue served 134 days in jail.[9]

At some point in 1992, Hogue was briefly employed by the Harvard Mineralogical Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts as a part-time cataloguer.[9] At the time, Hogue was taking a course in mineralogy at the Harvard Extension School.[9] In April 1993, the museum discovered that gems, mineral specimens, microscopes, and other items worth $50,000 had disappeared, and suspected Hogue as the result of a tip.[9]

On May 10, 1993, police arrested Hogue in Somerville, Massachusetts and charged him with grand larceny.[9] On May 26, 1993, Harvard police returned to Hogue's Somerville apartment and recovered $600 in electronic equipment reported stolen from a New Jersey electronics firm where Hogue worked in the summer of 1992.[10] In June 1993, Hogue was charged with two counts of larceny and one count of receiving stolen property by the Middlesex County District Attorney's Office.[10] Hogue's theft was one of the largest in the history of the Harvard University Police Department.[10]

Hogue violated the conditions of his parole by returning to Princeton and hanging around the campus using the name Jim MacAuthor; he had not officially enrolled, but had attended social functions and eaten in the cafeteria. After a graduate student recognized him, he was arrested on February 19, 1996, and taken into custody by the Princeton Borough Police – who later released him on his own recognizance. He was later incarcerated in the Mercer County Correctional Center on a conviction for defiant trespass.

Hogue was released from prison in 1997 and vanished from the public eye. In 1999, Jesse Moss, a director making a documentary film about Hogue, tracked him down in Aspen, Colorado and secured his cooperation.[11] The completed documentary, entitled Con Man, was released in 2003.[11] During this period, Hogue was arrested at least twice for theft.[11]

In January, 2005, police with a warrant searched Hogue's home in San Miguel County, Colorado, finding 7,000 items, worth over $100,000, stolen from nearby homes where Hogue had worked as a remodeller and repairman. The stolen goods "packed his house and a small secret compartment he'd built."[12] He was apprehended in Tucson, Arizona on February 4, 2006 by Deputy United States Marshal Richard J. Tracy Jr.[13][14] and deputies from the Pima County, Arizona Sheriff's department while Hogue was sitting in a Barnes & Noble cafe, surfing the internet.

On March 12, 2007, Hogue pleaded guilty to theft, in return for limiting his sentence and dropping additional charges.[15] He was released on probation in 2012.

On November 3, 2016, Hogue was arrested in Aspen on a misdemeanor theft warrant from Boulder County, Colorado.[16] Aspen police discovered Hogue living in an illegally constructed, camouflaged shack on Aspen Mountain,[11] and possibly in the midst of building a second illegal structure on the mountain.[16] Hogue gave a false name when apprehended and may be charged with criminal impersonation.[16]

• Samuels, David. The Runner: A True Account of the Amazing Lies and Fantastical Adventures of the Ivy League Impostor James Hogue, ISBN 159558188X

• Con Man home page