By Samuel Maull
Associated Press
NEW YORK — A grand jury has indicted 10 people, including teachers, students and administrators, on charges of tampering with a city college’s computer system to change grades and create fake degrees in exchange for money.
The defendants 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.
They 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.
“One dangerous thing they did was give degrees to physicians’ assistants,” Morgenthau said.
He said anyone thinking about hiring a person with a physician’s assistant degree from Touro should check out the job applicant carefully.
Morgenthau said records found in the Long Island home of defendant Andrique Baron, former $68,000-a-year admission’s director at Touro’s Manhattan campus, showed he was running the scheme as early as 2003 and possibly earlier.
“We don’t know how many hundreds, maybe thousands, were involved,” the district attorney said.
Baron’s main accomplice was Michael Cherner, former $80,000-a-year director of the computer center at Touro’s Brooklyn campus, Morgenthau said.
Baron, 34, of Elmont, and Cherner, 50, of Brooklyn, also took bribes to create master’s degree transcripts for three city public school teachers who never attended Touro, said the district attorney.
The teachers submitted the fake degrees to the Department of Education, Morgenthau said. An advanced degree is required for teachers to get permanent certification and increased pay.
Another customer — and co-defendant — was Lasheen Tingling, 31, of Brooklyn, a Touro graduate student who worked in the school’s registrar’s office, Morgenthau said. Baron changed Tingling’s records to reflect falsely that she had earned a master’s degree in special education, he said.
To create transcripts, Morgenthau said, the defendants copied legitimate records and inserted the name of the customer. Investigators found the fake and the original records in Baron’s home computer, he said.
Money was collected from the teachers by a bagman who was identified in Baron’s cell phone by the nickname Jimmy Bag, the district attorney said.
Touro spokeswoman Barbara Franklin said the college was aware of the ongoing investigation and has cooperated fully. She said Touro brought the wrongdoing to the attention of the district attorney’s office.
The scheme was “confined to what appears to have been a betrayal of trust by persons with responsibility for the integrity of the record-keeping,” she said.
Lawyers for Baron and Cherner did not immediately return telephone calls for comment Monday. Prosecutors said they did not know whether Tingling had a lawyer.
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 Jimmy Bag 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.
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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