He seemed like the Doogie Howser of India, able to crack the countrys best medical school, and work there as a 21-year-old doctor. Anoop Shankar later claimed to add a Ph.D. in epidemiology and treat patients even as he researched population-wide diseases. He won a genius visa to America, shared millions in grants, and boasted of membership in the prestigious Royal College of Physicians.

In 2012 West Virginia University hand-picked this international star to help heal one of the countrys sickest states. At just 37, Shankar was nominated to the first endowed position in a new School of Public Health, backed by a million dollars in public funds. As chair of the epidemiology department, he was also poised to help the university spend tens of millions of additional tax dollars. This is about improving healthcare and improving lives, said university president Jim Clements, announcing a federal grant for health sciences. We could not be more proud.

But there was a problem: Shankar isnt a Ph.D. He didnt graduate from the Harvard of India. He didnt write dozens of the scholarly publications on his resume, and as for the Royal College of Physicians, theyve never heard of him. He does have a masters degree in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina and an Indian medical degree, but at least two of his green card referencesattesting to world class creativity, genius insight, and a new avenue for treating hypertensionwere a forgery.

These are just some of the results of an inquiry into Shankars history, one that began as a standard pre-appointment review only to dilate into an ongoing, overlapping 18-month investigation. The case has captured the attention of two WVU offices, the Monongalia County courts, U.S. Immigration, and, in a lead role, Ian Rockett, chair of the promotion and tenure committee at the School of Public Health.

NBC News spoke with people familiar with all three probes and reviewed Rocketts 91-page report on Shankar, prepared partly in support of a lawsuit against his former colleague. Those documents, and several of Shankars colleagues, tell a similar story, describing a charming, bright-minded impostor who built a career on a base of lies.

His case exposes some of the profound dysfunction sometimes attributed to higher education, where the sanctity of research is threatened by skyrocketing retractions, epic frauds, and a system that seems ill-equipped to police itself. When you leave institutions in charge of an investigation, rather than, say, an outside watchdog organization, you are leaving the fox in charge of the henhouse, says Ivan Oransky, a founder of the whistleblower blog Retraction Watch.

"How many more are out there?"

Although Shankar was forced out of WVU in December of 2012, the university has yet to address the case publicly, allowing Shankar and his work to continue unchallenged. In the last year alone, hes published at least three papers, including one in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association. He also landed a new job on the backs of taxpayers: associate professor of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, a large public university in Richmond.

In response to questions from NBC News, WVU pledged to make a complete and full public statement when all the facts are clear and known. But in the meantime, Shankarwho repeatedly postponed interviews after NBC made multiple attempts to reach him over the course of several monthshas both an untarnished record and his green card, and he continues self-inventing.

I have never wittingly seen his kind before, says Rockett, who went public to raise awareness of academic fraud. How many more are out there?

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Ivory Tower Phony? Sex, Lies, Fraud Alleged at University