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Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote:Fake duke charged again with sexual assault

An Austin man who had claimed to be a British nobleman and was unmasked by Stillwater students was charged with assaulting a Chanhassen boy last summer.

Jim Adams, Star Tribune

Last update: July 06, 2006 – 11:36 PM

The man who would be duke but was exposed as a fraud at Stillwater High School has been charged with sexually assaulting a Chanhassen boy last summer.

Joshua A. Gardner is accused of having sex with a 15-year-old who later told a Chaska High School counselor about their consensual relationship. The teenager came forward after seeing January news reports about Gardner posing as a British noble at Stillwater High School, only to be exposed as a fraud by its student newspaper.

Gardner, 22, of Austin, Minn., had asked to be called "your grace" and said he was "Caspian James Crichton-Stuart IV, the Fifth Duke of Cleveland." But he couldn't spell the name of the castle where he supposedly lived, and British authorities told student reporters that there was no such noble as a Duke of Cleveland.

Gardner was charged Wednesday in Carver County District Court with third-, fourth- and fifth degree criminal sexual conduct and for being a sexual predator who didn't register his whereabouts when he stayed overnight at the Chanhassen boy's home last summer