A Republican in the Florida legislature notarized a letter purportedly from a professor with Ivy League credentials at the Christian university her family owns to support the school’s effort to get accreditated, but the professor says he never worked at the institution and the signature is a bad forgery, the Orlando Sentinel reports.
When Central Christian University applied for state certification in 2021, it included a list of faculty that included alumni from Ivy League universities, but five of the people on the list say they have no affiliation with the school. The names continued to appear in the school’s 2023-24 catalog as current members of the faculty.
On a form notarized by now-state legislator Carolina Amesty, the school submitted documentation allegedly signed by Robert Shaffer, a Ph.D. from the University of Florida, attesting to his employment in August 2021. Shaffer, however, told the Sentinel that if needed, he would swear in a court that he did not sign any document from the University or from Amesty, and that the signature was not his. Three handwriting analysts contacted by the paper concluded the handwriting wasn’t Shaffer’s but matched Amesty’s style. Amesty was elected to the legislature in 2022.