Trufax

Martin Joseph Rudolf Bohn was hired by Brandon University as a professor of psychology for the 1971-1972 year. What the university didn’t know was that Bohn was actually a cab driver from Worcester, Massachusetts, and was using a false identity to gain his position.

Bohn had applied to BU under the name of an American psychologist, Dr. Martin John Bohn. From the beginning of the year to when his fraud was discovered, Bohn taught at BU, was accredited by the Psychological Association of Manitoba, and opened a private counselling clinic in Brandon.

Bohn fled on April 2nd, 1973, thinking that his fraud had been uncovered. A fellow BU professor had found a book in the library by the real Dr. Bohn, which the fake Bohn claimed he was working on. The professor contacted the book’s co-author, who told him that as far as he knew, Dr. Bohn was working in Virginia. The discovery led to the a statement of the Board of Governors on April 10th announcing the fraud, and they retroactively terminated his contract for March 31st.

The RCMP and city police were called in to search for Bohn. Ultimately, he was caught in Worcester by the FBI, after he had registered at a Holiday Inn under the name Dr. Martin J. Bohn Jr. After being taken to court in Boston on May 19th, he accepted returning to Canada to face trial for the various fraud charges laid against him. Back in Canada, Bohn pleaded guilty to 13 charges of fraud on June 5th to 13th. The fraud charges involved $23000, 10000 of which came from the university, and the rest from local business accounts. He was able to reduce his jail time from 2 years to 6 months by paying $14000 in restitution. Bohn’s lawyer argued for a suspended sentence by claiming, among other things, that Bohn had taken the job at the university out of his interest in psychology (he had take psychology courses at three different universities), that he had made the same amount of money as a cab driver and a chef at a nursing home, that he was liked by other professors and his students (who all passed the final exam), and that the charges would damage his clean record. He also noted that Bohn was a war veteran, who had spent a year as a POW in Korea.

Mr. Justice J.R. Solomon did not take to these arguments, noting that: “...you showed your real personality and effectively demonstrated that you were not interested in psychology, but you were interested to become a ‘con expert’ and live on the fat of the land by securing yourself a $4000 a month standard of living ultimately paid for by the taxpayer of Manitoba by your falsehood and deceit.”

Mr. Justice J.R. Solomon also had harsh words for the university: “...you could not have achieved the results had it not been for a rather lax method used by the university in hiring the academic personnel...It appears that universities as a rule want to honour the established principle of not questioning the credentials of known academic personalities.”

Finally, Mr. Justice J.R. Solomon told Bohn that his fraud would lead to the populace questioning psychology as a science. “The public will now have a perfect right to question the validity of the subject of psychology as science when a taxi driver with something less than high school education was able to successfully hold his position as a professor of psychology for one whole academic year at the university before his impersonation would be recognized...it will take the students of psychology a long time a long time to convince the public that the subject of psychology merits the status of science.”