A mainland Chinese student who admitted using a fake certificate from a US Ivy League university to get into a top Hong Kong tertiary institution will “inevitably” face jail time, a magistrate has said.
Acting principal magistrate Cheang Kei-hong on Thursday convicted Li Sixuan, 28, of two crimes after she pleaded guilty to obtaining services by deception and possessing a false instrument.
According to court documents, the defendant claimed she had a Bachelor of Arts in linguistics from Columbia University and used a false certificate from that institution to apply for the Master of Arts in applied linguistics programme at HKU, where she was accepted in 2022.
She subsequently also submitted false credentials to the Immigration Department to obtain a student visa.
In an internal HKU investigation last year, Columbia University confirmed via email that Li had never graduated from the institution. HKU reported Li to police after she refused to attend a compulsory interview with the university’s administrator.
Later, she was stopped by immigration officers at a checkpoint while attempting to leave the city for mainland China, and told them that she was a graduate of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law’s Wuhan College.
