CSU caught a professor forging an offer letter to boost his pay. They kept him another year.
In July 2017, Colorado State University chemistry professor Brian McNaughton confessed to forging an offer letter and using it as leverage to secure a $5,000 raise and better investment in his lab from the university.
After initially pushing for him to resign shortly after discovering the forgery, CSU decided to let him stay on staff for almost another year, enough time to land a job at the University of Delaware.
The University of Delaware has since rescinded its job offer to McNaughton and scrubbed him from its faculty website, where he had been listed as recently as Wednesday morning, and Larimer County has charged him with attempting to influence a public servant, a Class 4 felony.
In 2017, CSU received an anonymous letter accusing McNaughton of forging the offer letter. On June 29 of that year, and two years after McNaughton delivered the forged offer letter, CSU Vice Provost Dan Bush sought to establish its veracity.
The former interim dean at the University of Minnesota confirmed he did not write or sign the letter. He added about the allegation, "Quite shocking indeed!"
From internal emails obtained by the Coloradoan, McNaughton's CSU supervisor described being "quite honestly devastated" at the revelation of the 2015 forgery.
CSU launched a disciplinary investigation shortly after learning about it. In August 2017, Dean of Natural Sciences Jan Nerger told McNaughton to resign by Oct. 1, 2017. The upper echelons of CSU denied his request for an timeline of Aug. 1, 2018, to resign, she said. But by resigning quickly, he could still avoid the employee disciplinary process, she wrote.
"The advantage I see is that if you resign, the messaging of your departure from CSU remains is (sic) in your hands," Nerger wrote in Aug. 14.
In March — eight months after the forgery was discovered and five months after his initial resignation deadline — McNaughton emailed his department chair, Chuck Henry, about accepting the job in Delaware and asked about buying CSU lab equipment to take with him.
Henry, who previously described being "devastated" by the forgery, congratulated McNaughton on the job.
CSU spokeswoman Dell Rae Ciaravola couldn't clarify why McNaughton's timeline to resign was extended to March. She said the matter was handled internally and according to university policy, and "the process was delayed due to personnel reasons that CSU cannot discuss."
There is no further investigation into the validity of McNaughton's research or other university activity, she said.
"The university takes allegations of dishonestly seriously and investigates these allegations with thoroughness, according to university employment policies and the facts of each situation," she wrote in an email.
CSU did not want this prosecuted and was comfortable with a civil resolution, McNaughton's attorney, Erik Fischer said. McNaughton repaid the roughly $15,000 he received as a retention raise stemming from the forged offer letter and agreed to find a new job.
Fischer said neither McNaughton or the university were in a rush for him to leave after the settlement was reached. Prior to the revelation of the forged offer letter, McNaughton was something of a rising star in his field. He received a $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for research into cancer and HIV treatment, an accomplishment CSU boasted about in 2014.
The weekend after he was confronted about the forgery, McNaughton wrote a letter to the dean to defend and explain his actions. He blamed a now ex-wife's frustration that they weren't as wealthy as other families in their upscale neighborhood.
In conversations with colleagues, "it was openly stated that multiple former CSU faculty (now either dead or no longer affiliated with CSU) lied about an outside offer letter" to boost their pay and lab equipment, McNaughton wrote. Ciaravola said the university has no evidence of other falsified offer letters.
"None of what I've written above is meant to excuse away my actions, although I hope it does provide context," McNaughton wrote. "... I gave in to enormous pressures, frustration, and my own ego, and foolishly delivered the letter featured in your evidence. I made an enormous mistake, one that brings with it the highest level of embarrassment and deepest regret."
He questioned the university not checking with the University of Minnesota about the validity of the offer letter and asked, "how did this part of this tragic story happen?" He also said he would have fully disclosed everything — if an administrator approached him directly with the accusations.
In a follow up, he told Nerger "I feel like, to date, the University has succumb(sic) to nothing short of terrorist threats and actions, clearly from a vindictive ex-wife."
The theme of a vicious divorce and child custody battle re-appeared constantly in emails between McNaughton and his supervisors. He sent them several police reports from fights between him and his wife.
His ex-wife did not return requests for comment Thursday.
McNaughton still blames her for why the falsified offer letter was brought to light a year after he thought the incident was settled. Fischer, the attorney, said he believes the felony charge was only brought because McNaughton's ex-wife "resurrected" the issue in an effort to gain leverage in ongoing custody and divorce disputes.
"It's an incredible shame that a guy who has worked so hard and is so talented will basically be shunned by the academic community for a mistake that he made that he took full responsibility for and repaid in kind, and based upon a vindictive ex-wife," Fischer said.
McNaughton was charged with the felony July 2. Shortly after, media reports emerged. The University of Delaware rescinded its offer to McNaughton on July 9, just a couple weeks before his scheduled start day there.
When asked for details, such as whether the decision to rescind the offer to McNaughton had to do with the charge, or the forged letter itself, all a spokesperson said was "the decision stemmed from the situation you are describing."