“I am not going to tell some twirp with an accountancy diploma who my professional colleagues are so that he can call around and embarrass me,” said McGill University psychology professor Avi Chaudhuri to the dean of his department in 2008, when accountants wanted to find out where a large chunk of money disappeared.
A psychologist sneering at anyone else's degree is not the biggest irony of that; the biggest irony is that he then got taken down by arithmetic. The sad part is it took 5 years to officially settle the court case that resulted. Those dumb accountants found that he spent over $150,000 on personal stuff - a $20,000 mattress for his mother, as an example, which he claimed was going to be used in a 'stroke study'. In India. Which is why he shipped it with his mother and it is now in India in the apartment of his family. He also was found to be spending university money on his own consulting business.
Chaudhuri clearly had some hubris. He seems to have believed his advisor and his Berkeley education made him some sort of 'rainmaker' for McGill and Canada was lucky to have him. Now he is hiding in India and Canada has done what is bordering on the impossible - fired a tenured professor.
Tenured McGill University professor fired after accounting ‘twirps’ uncover $159,500 in improper spending by Graeme Hamilton, National Post
