(U-WIRE) NEW YORK – While most graduates will walk through the arch Thursday stress-free and exuberant with success, one CAS student will be sitting behind bars in Rhode Island, contemplating a charge of multi-million dollar bank fraud.

Hakan Yalincak, a CAS senior majoring in mathematics, pleaded not guilty on Friday at the New Haven, Conn., district court to charges of conducting a $43 million bank fraud scheme by depositing fake certified checks into bank accounts in Connecticut and Switzerland. On a separate lawsuit in civil court, he is charged with conning Connecticut investors into investing $2.8 million in a non-existent hedge fund.

Yalincak’s parents are the major university benefactors who pledged $21 million to secure a home for the General Studies Program late last year, where Yalincak studied for two years before transferring to CAS. The donation has also funded the construction of a new theater-style classroom on West 4th Street where the old Bottom Line club used to be, and part of the money was to be earmarked for a professorship of Ottoman studies.

The family’s foundation has only given the university $1.25 million so far, university spokesman John Beckman said.

“Obviously we’re concerned by these developments and we’ll be looking into them,” Beckman said. “Ultimately, should it turn out that the money was given to the university by the foundation was not in fact the foundation’s to give us, we would expect to return that money.”

In the middle of March, Yalincak deposited counterfeit checks from prominent banks into bank accounts in Zurich and Greenwich, Conn., according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s office for Connecticut. By the time he tried to withdraw money though, the banks had already caught on to Yalincak’s counterfeit scheme and frozen his accounts, the statement said.

If convicted, Yalincak faces a maximum of 30 years in prison and up to $1,000,000 in fines.

A detention hearing is set for Thursday at 9:30 a.m. in New Haven.

– Bradley Hope