Alex James Fiske was expelled from Princeton University in 1993 after the college discovered that he had misrepresented himself in his application. At the time of his expulsion, he was a sophomore in good standing.

Alex told Princeton admissions that he was a 21 year old orphan, that he had graduated from high school at the age of 16 after which he had made his way around the Western part of the United States, working on cattle ranches, working as a white water rafting guide and photographing much of the nature of the West. As part of his application, he submitted a portfolio of pictures he had taken which were judged as very promising by Princeton’s art professors.

His SAT scores were a perfect 1600, and he submitted three 5s for AP exams that he said he had taken on his own at various times after he had graduated from high school. ETS confirmed that its records showed that an Alexander James Fiske did have those scores.

The admissions people had been troubled at the time of his original application because he could not submit a high school transcript. He claimed that his high school had undergone a serious fire and that all of the records had been destroyed. He did submit a letter from his high school principal confirming the fact that he had graduated from that school. The admissions office was also concerned that he had no letters of recommendation. Alex said that he was a shy and quiet student and that no teacher remembered him. He did, however, admit to being an excellent runner, and was accepted on the Princeton track team, where his coach agreed that he had great talent in track.

Alex said that his parents had been killed in an automobile accident when he was five years old and that an unmarried aunt had raised him. When Princeton contacted that aunt as part of its investigation, she told them that Alex was really named Alex Painter, that both of his parents were alive but divorced, and that he had lived sometimes with his mother and sometimes with his father. According to the aunt, both parents were severe alcoholics. She also told Princeton that at the time of his admission, Alex would have been 31 years old.

Since Princeton had given Alex a full scholarship, the school had him arrested on charges of fraud and misrepresentation. Once in police custody, it was quickly learned that Alex had spent nine months in a California minimum corrections facility on a theft conviction and that Nevada had an outstanding warrant for him on charges of having stolen materials from the white water rafting company for which he had once worked.

When the news broke that Princeton had been tricked, the university dropped its charges against Alex. Sensing an interesting story, the New York Times sent reporters onto the New Jersey campus to interview people who had known him.

It turned out that most people knew nothing. They universally described him as a "loner," polite but non-communicative, someone who kept to himself, a man of few words, a good student. His track teammates said that he was a hardworking and focused athlete, but that he had no contact with any of them outside of practice. His professors had no personal knowledge of him and could only agree that he had done very well in their classes. At the time of his expulsion from Princeton, Alex was maintaining a 3.7 average.

Times’ reporters did track down the California high school from which he had graduated. His transcript showed him to be a mediocre student, taking mostly business and industrial arts courses. He had not belonged to any student group but was, as he claimed, on the track team. The Times could find no one who was his friend, and most students did not even remember him.

With the exception of the time in prison and the stint with the rafting company, there was no record of what he did from the age of 18 to the age of 31.