During the fall semester in 2022, a new student came to Lincoln Northwest High School in Lincoln, Neb., as a junior transfer student. By springtime, he reemerged across town at Lincoln Southeast — a school he had graduated from in 2015.

The student known by peers as 17-year-old “Zach Hess” was really Zachary Scheich, a 26-year-old man who for more than 50 school days passed himself off as a high-schooler to befriend, exploit and, in some cases, sexually assault more than a dozen girls, some as young as 13. With a slight build and standing 5-foot-4, he fit in with the teenage students, police indicated.