Sen. Sam Cataldo obtained Masters degree in Nuclear Engineering from notorious degree mill
State Sen. Sam Cataldo (R-Farmington) describes himself as a retired nuclear engineer with a Master’s degree in Nuclear Engineering from La Salle University. Cataldo’s official biography is vague on details but PollVault data indicates Cataldo obtained his degree from the Louisiana school in 1995 at the age of 58.
La Salle University in Mandeville, Louisiana (not to be confused with La Salle University in Philadelphia, which has no engineering department) was a notorious “degree mill” correspondence school that was shut down by federal authorities after a 1996 FBI investigation. Founder Thomas James Kirk pleaded guilty to mail fraud and tax evasion and was sentenced to five years in federal prison.
John Bear, a diploma mill consultant to the FBI, described the results of the investigation. “LaSalle had one faculty member serving 15,000 students,” he wrote. Small print on the La Salle application “made clear that signing that document made them Ministers of Kirk’s World Christian Church, and that any degrees they might earn would be religious degrees, regardless of what subject they were in.”
Numerous public officials around the country have been caught padding their resumes with bogus degrees from La Salle, including the Navy’s surgeon general, a top official with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the president of Quincy University and the former police chief of Stockton, California.
Bear says the U.S. Attorney notified every person in the LaSalle files about Kirk’s guilty plea and offered refunds from the confiscated funds – if they turned in their diplomas. Many failed to respond.