Last summer, Karl Helge Hampus Svensson, 31, was among the 180 students admitted to the freshman class after receiving top grades in high school and courses he took online over the previous six years.

But last fall, institute officials received two anonymous letters claiming that Svensson had been a Nazi sympathizer who was paroled from a maximum-security prison after being convicted in 2000 of murder, a killing the police called a hate crime.

After confirming the information, the institute had to decide: should Svensson be allowed to become a doctor?

As the International Herald Tribune reports, that the decision on Svensson’s fate came down to a technicality.

In re-examining his application forms recently, an institute official noticed that Svensson’s high school transcript, dated 1995, was under his current surname, Svensson, not what is believed to be his family name, Hellekant. Svensson changed his name after being convicted of the crime.