Touro College’s former admissions director and former computer center director and three New York City public school teachers have been indicted on charges that they took part in a scheme involving fraudulent transcripts, the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, said yesterday.
He said those defendants were among 10 people indicted in a “cash for grades scheme” in which students’ transcripts were altered and transcripts and degrees were created for people who had never attended the institution, including the three city teachers. The teachers were said to have bought falsified master’s degrees from Touro that helped in their promotion and their certification.
Mr. Morgenthau said the former admissions director, Andrique Baron, and the former computer center director, Michael Cherner, had worked with an intermediary, Vladimir Diaquoi, who was said to have collected payments from the teachers and delivered forged transcripts to them. The district attorney said that people paid $3,000 to $25,000 for the false or altered transcripts.
Mr. Baron was arrested in March and Mr. Cherner was arrested this month, the district attorney said, adding that both had been suspended from their jobs. The teachers and one other defendant, a Touro student, were arrested this month. Four others, including three former students, were still being sought.
A woman who answered the phone at the home of Mr. Cherner hung up after an interview was requested. Mr. Baron’s number could not immediately be located. Ron Davis, a spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers, said the teachers had not contacted the union. At this reporter’s request, Mr. Davis left a message for one, seeking comment, but the message was not responded to. He said he was unable to reach the other two at all.
The district attorney said that at least seven transcripts were tampered with from January through March of this year, but added that his office had found alterations affecting transcripts dating to 2003. And he said the office found indications that at least 50 other transcripts had also been tampered with this year.
Mr. Morgenthau said the investigation was continuing, adding that he believed that hundreds, maybe even thousands, of transcripts may have been fabricated or altered.
Franklyn H. Snitow, a New York lawyer representing Touro, said, “We are doing our due diligence to determine the scope of these problems,” but “we don’t believe that the numbers reached the hundreds or thousands.”
The district attorney said Touro discovered the problem and reported it in February to the police, who referred the case to the district attorney.
Touro said in a statement yesterday that it was cooperating with the investigation.
“This conduct was confined to what appears to have been a betrayal of trust by persons with responsibility for the integrity of the record-keeping, and only because we had certain controls in place were we able to identify the wrongdoing and bring it to the attention of law enforcement,” the statement said.
Touro, a Manhattan-based independent college that describes itself as operating under Jewish auspices, has more than 23,000 students, about half undergraduates.
Margie Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Education, said the three teachers charged — Florence Constant, Renee Rene and Ghislene Joseph Julmice — were still on the payroll but were not working this summer. She added that they would be reassigned to positions outside the classroom until the charges were resolved, and dismissed if found guilty. She said that Ms. Constant and Ms. Rene were both tenured and could not be dismissed without a hearing.
Ms. Constant, who taught at the Queens School for Career Development and earns $64,333 a year, worked as a paraprofessional from 1988 to 1998, and then as an uncertified teacher from 1998 to 2003. She was appointed as a teacher in September 2003, and then had five years to earn a master’s degree.
Ms. Rene, who taught at Public School 233 in Queens, started as a paraprofessional in 1987, became a regular substitute teacher in 2001 and was appointed a special education teacher in 2003. She earns $60,889.
Ms. Julmice, who worked most recently at P.S. 243 Weeksville School in Brooklyn, was a paraprofessional from 1996 to last February, when she was appointed a special education teacher. Her salary is $42,512.
Ms. Feinberg said the Education Department’s human resources office conducts background checks, “but if the higher education officials are in collusion, it’s hard to find out.”
