Ethics Newsline®

NEW YORK
Fourteen New York City firefighters, including a deputy chief, a battalion commander, and a captain, were accused last week of submitting phony college diplomas in order to receive promotions.

The city’s Department of Investigation said the officers claimed to have taken classes at St. Regis University, a defunct establishment that described itself as a “distance learning center” operating out of Liberia, according to the New York Daily News.

Department of Investigation commissioner Rose Gill Hearn also faulted the Fire Department for being careless in evaluating the credentials. “The Fire Department accepted some of the worthless diplomas, obtained from an Internet diploma mill, because the Department did not take sufficient steps to verify their authenticity,” she said, according to Newsday.

She added that the dishonest firefighters “compromised the credibility of the promotion process in the FDNY.”

The New York Post reports that the Department of Investigation uncovered the phony degrees after an anonymous tip.

Acceptance of the degrees may have resulted in some confusion between St. Regis University, which is now out of business after falsely claiming official approval by the Liberian government, and a legitimate Massachusetts institution called Regis College, according to a report in the Advance of Staten Island, New York.

No criminal charges or disciplinary actions have been filed yet in the case, according to press reports.