Advertisement
Advertisement

Teacher taught a lesson after faking job qualifications

Man 'desperate' to support family bought degree certificate online to land job at upscale school

Johnny Tam

A former substitute teacher at the Hong Kong campus of Britain's Harrow School was jailed for 12 weeks yesterday for lying about his qualifications for the job.

Alvarado Nelson-Antonio Gutierrez, a 41-year-old Dominican national, was represented by his lawyer, Chris Short, who said Gutierrez had "strong family reasons" for the deception, as he was "desperate to support his family".

He said Gutierrez had two daughters, aged 16 and 18, the older of whom had been diagnosed with severe depression in 2011. After showing suicidal tendencies last year, she had been suspended from school.

Short said Gutierrez, a bachelor-degree graduate of Florida International University, had committed the crime because he "needs to supplement family income" and "has to pay bills for his daughter's medical treatment".

"He is utterly ashamed of what he has done," Short added.

The Tuen Mun Court heard earlier that Gutierrez had come to Hong Kong on a dependent's visa with his wife and two daughters. He had been hired by Harrow International School last December as a full-time temporary supply teacher after submitting an application that said he held a master's degree from the University of Hong Kong with a certificate and academic transcript.

When the school submitted his documents to the Education Bureau in January, the bureau suspected that the master's degree certificate was falsified. The school suspended Gutierrez.

The University of Hong Kong confirmed on June 10 that it had never issued Gutierrez with such a certificate and Gutierrez turned himself in at Tuen Mun police station 11 days later, admitting he had bought it online.

Handing down Gutierrez's sentence for using a false instrument, deputy magistrate Hui Chun-sing said there was no indication he had gained the position due to the falsified document but that submitting it might have helped him land the job.

A spokeswoman for the school said it had followed the Education Bureau's guidelines on assessing qualifications and that all applicants for teaching posts were required to submit such documents for verification.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Teacher taught a lesson after faking job qualifications
Post