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The Wages of Huge Flat-Screens in Every Room

From a newspaper article excerpted in University Diaries, July 16, 2007:

Teachers, students and administrators tampered with a private college’s computer system to change grades and create fake degrees for money, prosecutors charged Monday. Among the fake degrees given were those for physicians’ assistants, they said.

The 10 defendants created or altered records for at least 50 people since January , charging fees of $3,000 to $25,000 for better or deleted grades and for bachelor’s and master’s degrees, District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said.

Those indicted include Touro College’s former director of admissions, the former director of the school’s computer center, three former Touro students and three public school teachers, Manhattan prosecutors said.

“One dangerous thing they did was give degrees to physicians’ assistants,” Morgenthau said.

Records found in the home of Andrique Baron, a former admissions director at Touro’s campus in Manhattan, showed he was running the scheme as early as 2003 and possibly earlier, Morgenthau said.

“We don’t know how many hundreds, maybe thousands, were involved,” the district attorney said.

Baron’s main accomplice was Michael Cherner, former director of the computer center at the school’s Brooklyn campus, Morgenthau said.

Baron, 34, and Cherner, 50, also took bribes to create master’s degree transcripts for three city schoolteachers who never attended Touro, said the district attorney.

Money was collected from the teachers by a bagman identified in Baron’s cell phone by the nickname Jimmy Bag, the district attorney said.

… Baron spent the cash on two luxury cars, high-end audio equipment and huge flat-screen television sets in almost every room in his home, Morgenthau said.

Six of the 10 defendants were arrested at various times from March to July on charges of computer trespass, computer tampering and falsifying business records. Baron, Cherner and the bag man also were charged with bribe receiving. All the charges are punishable by up to four years in prison.

Four of the 10 defendants are at large.

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New York Post, yesterday:

A second Touro College computer honcho is going to prison for running his office as a literal diploma mill — pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars from students seeking better transcripts, glowing letters of recommendation and in a few cases completely fabricated degrees.

“This was a horrendous betrayal of trust,” Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Thomas Farber told the crook, Andrique Baron, 36, of Elmont, L.I., before sentencing him this afternoon to serve between 2 2/3 and 8 years prison.

Baron was the former director of admissions for Touro’s School of Career and Applied Studies on West 23rd St.

For at least four years, he and his co-defendant — Mikhail “Michael” Cherner, the former computer director at the Kings Highway, Brooklyn, campus — took money from a dozen students, who were also charged, in a “Sawbucks-for-Sheepskins” scandal that became public two years ago.

Some of Cherner and Baron’s “customers” merely changed “F’s” to “A’s” on their transcripts.

Three teachers paid $3,000 each to buy the Masters degree required to teach special ed.

A Queens man bought a bogus psychology masters, while a Brooklyn woman bought her bachelors without taking a single class, and a fake letter of recommendation to law school went for $50,000.

When the scandal broke, prosecutors said they feared the pair had sold doctored degrees to as many as 50 people — including some for physicians assistants and physical therapists.

The Board of Ed, which issues licenses in these fields, had to sift through the credentials of thousands of Touro alumni to be sure there were no bogus teachers, therapists or medical personnel working in the city, said prosecutor Jonathan Lenzner.

The horrible publicity affected everything from accreditation to admissions to the ability to get bank loans, said Frank Snitow, a lawyer for the college, which has 17,000 students internationally. [They seem to have dumped the Career and Applied Studies name. UD can’t find it on their website.]

Baron apologized in court, peevishly — bemoaning he didn’t get a “second chance” — before being led out in cuffs.

Margaret Soltan, August 1, 2009 9:22AM
Posted in: hoax

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2 Responses to “The Wages of Huge Flat-Screens in Every Room”

  1. Brad Says:

    It reminds me of a joke: "What do they call the person who finishes last in his medical class?"

    Ans.: "Doctor."

  2. AAAAAAA Says:

    Touro College has undergraduate schools such as School of General Studies, New York School of Career and Applied Studies, as well as Lander College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, College of liberal Arts and Sciences etc… These are undergraduate Touro College’s sections within its college. If a student is awarded an Associate Degree or Bachelor Degree the transcript will reflect some courses they will not attend. This means that if a student wants to pursue education in another institution their credential will be questioned and most likely not accepted even though Touro College is Fully Accredited. Touro College’s undergraduate practices are fraudulent. Since courses are added which a student never attended.

    If a student with a Bachelor Degree from undergraduate Touro College decides to go for a degree in Touro Colleges graduate programs such as Physician Assistant, Physical Therapy, Speech Therapy or Occupational Therapy; the student will never graduate the program because the Directors of the graduate programs are aware of Touro College’s undergraduate Degree granting fraud.

    Touro College’s Graduate programs likes students who received their degrees from other Colleges, such as City University of New York, or some Private Colleges and these student will most likely graduate and will most likely will pass the boards to obtain their licenses in their profession of study.

    THE BOTTOM LINE IS TENS OF THOUSANDS OF STUDENTS WHO RECEIVED THEIR DEGREES FROM TOURO COLLEGE’S UNDERGRADUATE DIVISIONS WILL MOST LIKELY NEVER SEE GRADUATE SCHOOLS AND MAJORITY OF THE DEGREES ARE FRAUDULENT.

    THE ONLY REASON WHY TOURO AWARDS THESE FRAUDULENT DEGREES TO SHOW BOARD OF EDUCATION THAT TOURO PROVIDES GOOD EDUCATION AND THAT ITS STUDENTS ARE HAPPY. THE TRUTH IS TENS OF THOUSANDS OF UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS WHO RECEIVED DEGREES LIFES ARE DESTROYED.

    DON’T GO TO TOURO COLLEGE OR YOU WILL DESTROY YOUR LIFE.

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