Former lab chief had fake degree

By John Ruch

jamaicaplaingazette

Annie Dookhan, the former drug lab chemist at the heart of an evidence-tampering scandal at Jamaica Plain’s State Laboratory Institute, is facing charges that include lying about holding a master’s degree. While state officials are portraying the scandal as an isolated incident, a former State Lab chief got in trouble in 2003 for claiming to hold a doctorate that he had bought online from an unaccredited university.

diploma fraud

Ralph Timperi, the former director of the State Lab, represented himself as holding a Ph.D. without noting that it came from an Argentina-based mail-order college that essentially sold degrees for $500 without requiring classes or a dissertation, as the Boston Globe and Harvard Crimson reported at the time.

Timperi later renounced the degree and was allowed to keep his job, according to Globe articles at the time.

This article was written by John Ruch and originally published on jamaicaplaingazette