Michael Abramson / Time Life Pictures / Getty 
 
 A Princeton sophomore in 1991, Alexi Indris-Santana had all the makings of a big man on campus. His tales of growing up as a self-taught ranch hand in Utah and sleeping under the stars with his horse, Good Enough, won over admissions officials. He was taking six or seven courses a semester and earning mostly A's. A talented runner, he had earned glowing local coverage before even arriving on campus, and the Daily Princetonian had asked three times for an interview so they could profile him as an up-and-coming track star. But running would also be Indris-Santana's undoing: at the Harvard-Yale-Princeton meet in 1991, a Yale senior recognized him from Palo Alto  where he had been caught masquerading as a high school student at age 26. 
 
 The promising academic and athletic star, as it turned out, was actually James Hogue, 31, an ex-con from Kansas City, Kansas. He was arrested and charged with forgery, wrongful impersonation and falsifying records. He spent nine months behind bars and had to pay back nearly $22,000 in financial aid. But the Princeton hoax was not Hogue's last: in 1992, he turned up as a guard in one of Harvard's museums, and was arrested after just a few months on the job, charged with grand larceny for stealing gemstones worth $50,000. Violating his probation, Hogue returned to Princeton, posing as a graduate student though he was never enrolled in classes. He made headlines as recently as 2007, when he pleaded guilty to felony theft, having stolen about 7,000 items worth some $100,000 from Colorado homes over several years. He is currently serving a 10-year sentence in prison. 

 “Top Imposter” James Hogue pleads guilty after being caught living in an illegal shack on Aspen Mountain https://t.co/raEMRFpR1p pic.twitter.com/AYHpIj0be4 — The Denver Post (@denverpost) February 10, 2017 
 
 Alexi Santana was the self-educated running star from the Montana desert, where he trained on his own, riding a horse named “Good Enough” and herding cattle for a living. He wowed the admissions office at Princeton University with his incredible backstory: His father was an artist who died in a car crash, his mother a sculptor dying of leukemia in Switzerland, he wrote. 
 
 He made the Princeton dean’s list, the varsity track team, and was even tapped for the prestigious Ivy Club. If the name Alexi Santana sounds unfamiliar, maybe the track star’s real name does: James Arthur Hogue. 
 
 At the Harvard-Yale-Princeton meet in 1991, a Yale senior recognized him from Palo Alto — where he had been caught pretending to be a high school student at age 26. It turns out Santana was actually Hogue, a 31-year-old ex-convict who served 10 months in a Utah prison for stealing racing bicycles, according to a story in The Washington Post in 1995. Hogue was arrested and charged with forgery, wrongful impersonation and falsifying records. 
 
 He became an infamous con man, who TIME named one of the “Top 10 Imposters” and “whose unlikely rise and precipitous fall shows us the darker side of our idealized meritocracy,” a reporter wrote in The Post. 
 
 Decades later — after a slew of hoaxes, schemes and thefts — the great con man has done it once again, this time on a mountain in Aspen, Colo. After spending about a year living in an illegally built shack on Shadow Mountain — the westernmost peak on Aspen Mountain — Hogue, now 57, was caught with a cache of stolen goods, and on Monday, pleaded guilty to two felonies. 
 
 He was arrested after employees with a skiing company spotted his cabin, apparently built with materials and tools stolen from nearby construction sites, the Aspen Daily News reported. 
 
 Police were alerted to the cabin in September, but when officers hiked up and knocked on the door, Hogue fled out a window and disappeared into the woods. When officers went back the next morning, the shack had been completely cleaned out, dismantled by city parks department employees. So in response, Hogue had dug out a 6-foot hole nearby for a new foundation and started rebuilding it. 
 
 In November, at a local public library, Aspen police officer Dan Davis took Hogue into custody, he told the Aspen Times. Hogue saw the officer’s uniform “and it was like an ‘Oh crap’ moment for him,” Davis said. 
 
 Hogue got up out of his seat, turned away from Davis and began walking away along the back wall of the library, Davis said. Davis followed and asked Hogue to stop and talk to him, which he did. The officer asked if he was Hogue, and Hogue said he wasn’t, according to Davis. 
 
 “He said his name was David Bee … from Ontario (Canada),” Davis said. “But I knew it was him.” 
 
 “I said, ‘We’ll figure it out at the jail. If it’s not you, we’ll apologize and let you go on your way,’” Davis said. Hogue later admitted his identity at the jail. 
 
 In Hogue’s Nissan Xterra SUV, police found nearly $17,000 in cash as well as stolen ski jackets, ski pants and ledgers detailing an online eBay business, the Aspen Times reported. 
 
 James Hogue, 57, faces between one and three years in prison after pleading guilty to felony theft between $2,000 and $5,000, felony possession of burglary tools and misdemeanor obstructing police officers, the Aspen Times reported. 
 
 In court Monday, Hogue told the judge, “I had a wire cutter in my toolbox and it could be used for burglary.” As part of a plea deal that saw several other felony charges dismissed, the district attorney’s office did not object to concurrent, as opposed to consecutive, sentences for the felonies. His attorney also asked that he be considered for probation or a halfway house setting, which the judge allowed. 
 
 His admission comes as anything but a surprise to Aspen police — he’s been on their radar since as early as 1997, when he was arrested for stealing a bike and pushing a police officer, and the shortly after was arrested for trying to steal hair regrowth treatment and food from a local market. 
 
 That was nothing compared to the schemes that followed. In 2006, U.S. marshals arrested Hogue in a Barnes and Noble in Arizona for stealing about 7,000 items worth some $100,000 from Colorado homes over several years, hiding some in a secret compartment in his small residence. He was sentenced in 2007 to five years in federal prison. 
 
 But through all his crimes and cons, Hogue’s greatest fame — captured in a New Yorker profile and a documentary — still rose from the Princeton hoax, for which he spent nine months behind bars and had to pay back nearly $22,000 in financial aid. 
 
 Much like we admire Jay Gatsby’s “fevered strivings to reach the green light at the end of the dock, to invent a new name and a new past for himself and to win the love of Daisy Buchanan,” David Samuels wrote in The Post in the 1995 article, “it is also hard not to admire James Hogue,” however deceptive his acts. 
 
 “It is hard not to admire the man who so thoroughly fooled the Princeton admissions committee, and who remained true, after all, to his own particular vision of himself, which he realized at Princeton with style, ambition and at least a measure of success.” 
 
 And it was not to be his last appearance in the Ivy League realm. In 1992, he turned up as a guard in one of Harvard’s museums, and was arrested after just a few months on the job, charged with grand larceny for stealing gemstones worth $50,000. Violating his probation, Hogue returned to Princeton, posing as a graduate student though, of course, he was never enrolled in classes. 

 A notorious con man caught with a cache of stolen goods after being found living in an illegally built shack on Aspen Mountain pleaded guilty Monday to two felonies. 
 
 James Hogue, 57, faces between one and three years in prison after pleading guilty to felony theft between $2,000 and $5,000, felony possession of burglary tools and misdemeanor obstructing police officers. 
 
 “I had a wire cutter in my toolbox and it could be used for burglary,” Hogue admitted Monday. 
 
 Prosecutor Sarah Oszczakiewicz agreed not to object to Hogue receiving concurrent instead of consecutive sentences on the charges, as well as allowing him to possibly receive a probation-only sentence. 
 
 It remains unclear how long Hogue had been living in the shack on Shadow Mountain — the westernmost peak on Aspen Mountain — though police have speculated that it might have been as long as a year. He ducked out a window in September when an officer hiked up to the shack and knocked on the door. 
 
 He was arrested about two months later when Aspen Skiing Co. employees saw him trying to build another cabin in the same area. That led police to his Nissan Xterra SUV, where they found nearly $17,000 in cash as well as stolen ski jackets, ski pants and ledgers detailing an online eBay business. 
 
 Hogue also is wanted in Boulder County on two counts of misdemeanor theft. 
 
 Time magazine named Hogue one of the country’s “top 10 imposters” for posing as a high school student in Palo Alto, California, when he was 26, and a college student on track scholarship at Princeton when he was in his early 30s. He also was arrested for stealing $50,000 worth of jewels from a Harvard museum in the early 1990s, and then served time in a Colorado prison after pleading guilty to stealing items in the Telluride area. 
 
 Hogue is scheduled to be sentenced next month. 
 
 In other court news Monday: 
 
 • A 31-year-old Basalt man pleaded guilty Monday to felony conspiracy to commit menacing in relation to a series of violent, angry outbursts this fall. 
 
 Matthew Kornafel faces between a year and 18 months in prison for the plea, though the prosecutor in the case agreed not to object to a probation-only sentence, said Molly Owens, Kornafel’s public defender. 
 
 Kornafel was arrested Sept. 29 for standing in traffic on Highway 82 and Cemetery Lane while beating on a hotel shuttle and yelling obscenities at the driver. He was charged with disorderly conduct in that case. 
 
 Three days later he was arrested again after a confrontation at New York Pizza that included him stealing a $3 brownie and smearing it on the business’ glass door. 
 
 Approximately 10 days later, he was arrested again after threatening employees at a garage at the Aspen Business Center with a baseball bat. 
 
 Kornafel is set to be sentenced next month. 
 
 jauslander@aspentimes.com 

 A con man’s three-decade criminal history, which included a stop at Palo Alto High School, has led to another felony conviction. 
 
 James Hogue, 57, pleaded guilty Monday to felony theft and other charges related to a cache of stolen goods that came to light when he was found living in an illegally built shack at a Colorado ski area, the Aspen Times has reported. 
 
 In 1985, Hogue — then 26 years old — took classes at Palo Alto High School, claiming to be a 16-year-old from a Nevada commune. His deception was exposed after an eyebrow-raising performance at the Stanford Invitational cross-country meet. 
 
 In his latest escapade, it remains unclear how long Hogue had been living in the shack on Aspen Mountain. He was arrested in November when Aspen Skiing Co. employees saw him starting to build another cabin in the same area, the Times said. 
 
 He faces one to three years in prison. 
 
 Hogue was never charged with any crime related to the 1985 episode in Palo Alto, but in the years since then he had come to the attention of law enforcement authorities several times. 
 
 His tale, as documented in excerpts from Mercury News articles: 
 
 Oct. 11, 1985 
 
 Jay Huntsman insisted he isn’t different from most teen-agers. 
 
 “I’m just a normal kid, ” he said, tossing pebbles around a Palo Alto High School basketball court. “I just want to fit in.” 
 
 For two weeks, Palo Alto school officials have been trying to figure out exactly where the youngster does fit in. Going by the nickname Riivk (“RIV-kee), he showed up at the school Sept. 10 after he said he was rebuffed by Stanford University officials because he didn’t have a high school diploma. 
 
 Riivk, who claims to be 16, also said he didn’t have a birth certificate, parents, a guardian or any school records. He said he did have a car, a job and a Palo Alto apartment, facts that school officials have confirmed, and enough money to live. 
 
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 The money, Riivk said, was earned during his eight years on an agricultural commune near Wendover, Nev. 
 
 Riivk quickly made a name for himself at Palo Alto High with his running ability. This week, he ran fast enough to win the Stanford Invitational cross-country boys championship. But because of questions about his past, he was ordered beforehand not to cross the finish line. 
 
 The 5-foot-9, 125-pound Riivk said he began running on the commune during breaks in farm work, logging 50 to 60 miles a week. 
 
 He says he has never attended school and has been tutored in reading, math and history at the commune. 
 
 Questions about Riivk’s past may keep him from ever competing for Palo Alto High. Riivk said he doesn’t care. 
 
 “Those races were a pain, ” he said. “I don’t want to do them if they are going to be a problem.” 
 
 Oct. 27, 1985 
 
 His mother calls him a “closed-mouth kid, ” but James Arthur Hogue can tell quite a tale when he wants to. 
 
 Hogue, 26, spent the past six weeks masquerading as a 16- year-old boy from a Nevada commune who liked to run with the wind. His story won him conditional admittance to Palo Alto High School, where he unofficially ran with the cross country team. 
 
 But those who knew the Kansas City, Kan., native say he is just a frustrated ex-college runner who wanted some glory. 
 
 “I think he did it to further his running career, ” said Andrea LeBlanc, Hogue’s roommate for nine months in 1983 and 1984 at the University of Texas at Austin. “He was an intense, disciplined runner.” 
 
 Although Hogue did not make the college team at Austin, he did run cross country for the University of Wyoming in 1977 and 1978. In both years he competed in the National Collegiate Athletic Association cross country finals, but finished with unimpressive times. 
 
 Hogue’s mother, who identified herself only as Mrs. Eugene Hogue, laughed throughout a phone interview from the family home in Kansas City when told of her son’s exploits. She said she could not remember the last time she saw her son, but added that he calls once or twice a year to let his family know he is alive and well. 
 
 Hogue’s mother recalled that her son “doesn’t look very old, but I can’t imagine him doing such a thing.” 
 
 Still laughing, she added, “But if it’s that bizarre, I don’t want anything to do with it.” 
 
 April 1988 
 
 When Hogue showed up in the news because of criminal charges in connection with stolen sports equipment in California and Utah, the Mercury News learned he had been living in Colorado and posing as the holder of a Stanford degree in bioengineering. 
 
 On the basis of his word and his impressive ability as a runner, he was hired in 1986 to teach at a cross-training clinic boasting other respected names in running, bicycling and swimming. 
 
 After more than a year in that job, he was outed by a runner who had known him five years earlier in Texas. “It seemed like James was starting to do things that weren’t funny anymore — defrauding people, ” Marty Froelick said. “It wasn’t a joke anymore.” 
 
 February 1991 
 
 Hogue, then 31, was arrested in a geology lab at Princeton University, where had been admitted to the undergraduate program under the name of Alexi Indris-Santana. 
 
 In his application in 1988, “Santana” claimed that he was 18 years old, self-educated and that he had been a cowboy on a Utah ranch. He was admitted that fall on a scholarship but took a one-year deferment, claiming he wanted to spend time with his ailing mother in Switzerland. 
 
 In reality, Hogue spent the time in prison term for possession of stolen property. His 1991 arrest was because he had left Utah without telling his parole officer. 
 
 February 1992 
 
 James Arthur Hogue, alias Alexi Indris-Santana, alias Jay Mitchell Huntsman, will not be sent to prison for deceiving Princeton University officials out of $22,000 in scholarship funds. 
 
 Hogue, whose student status at the prestigious Ivy League school ended when he was spotted by a Palo Alto High School graduate, pleaded guilty Monday in a New Jersey court to one count of theft in a plea bargain that included dismissal of charges of forgery and falsifying records. 
 
 June 2007 
 
 James Hogue’s life of elaborate self-invention is ending at a Colorado state prison, where the frail 47-year-old last month started serving a 10-year term for theft. 
 
 At his mountain home, Colorado police say, he variously misrepresented himself as a geologist and a native of Wyoming with a chemical engineering degree, a lucrative patent and a wife in Aspen. He also accumulated enough stolen items to fill a flea market, including moose antlers, medical books, stuffed bears, bicycles, red-silk high heels, rare wood, copper pans, power saws and champagne. 
 
 “It’s hard to explain why I do this, ” Hogue told the judge before being sent off to Four Mile Correctional Center in the remote Rocky Mountain town of Canon City. “It’s nothing that I can really understand myself.”
– Time named him one of America's "top 10 impostors," and now James Hogue is likely headed back to prison after authorities found him living in a homemade shack high in the Colorado mountains. A police officer spotted the 57-year-old con man in the illegal shack on Shadow Mountain in September—he may have been living there for up to a year—but Hogue escaped out a window, the Aspen Times reports. He was arrested weeks later after being spotted trying to build a new cabin. Authorities say he had stolen ski gear and $17,000 in cash in his car. On Monday, Hogue pleaded guilty to felony theft and felony possession of burglary tools. He's facing up to three years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced next month. Hogue first made headlines when at the age of 26 he posed as a high school student in Palo Alto. The Mercury News, which has an in-depth timeline of Hogue's criminal exploits, reports he was discovered after an "eyebrow-raising performance" at a track meet. Hogue went on to pose as a student at Princeton while in his early 30s. He made the varsity track team and the dean's list, but his ruse was once again discovered during a track meet, according to the Washington Post. Hogue was also busted for stealing $50,000 in jewels from a Harvard museum while working as a guard in the early '90s and went to prison in 2007 for burglarizing around 7,000 items from homes in Colorado. (Our greatest con man remains a mystery.)