PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A former dean of Temple University's business school has been convicted of a scheme to forge data to falsely tell donors, applicants, and students that the school was among the top-ranked online and part-time programs of their kind in the country.
Moshe Porat, 74 from Bala Cynwyd, was convicted on fraud charges. Prosecutors said he launched a conspiracy over a span of years to give false information about the school's online and part-time MBA programs to U.S. News and World Report for its educational rankings.
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The scheme, launched with Temple professor Isaac Gottlieb and school employee Marjorie O'Neill, led to the publication ranking Temple's Richard J. Fox School of Business and Management's online MBA program number one four years in a row, from 2015 to 2018.
“Moshe Porat misrepresented information about Fox’s application and acceptance process, and therefore about the student-body itself, in order to defraud the rankings system, potential students, and donors," said United States Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams.
"This case was certainly unusual, but at its foundation, it is just a case of fraud and underlying greed."
