Following the filing of a complaint and affidavit in July 2022, Georgios Laliotis, a postdoctoral researcher from Ohio State University (OSU), was found guilty of creating and sending fake recommendation letters, supposed to be from his supervisor, Dr Philip Tsichlis.
It all started when Laliotis’ contract at OSU was terminated on 30th November 2021, after the supervisor Tsichlis discovered that these papers, and at least one more paper he co-authored with Laliotis, contained data that had been fabricated and/or manipulated by Laliotis. Tsichlis then emailed the journal editors to request the retraction of two of the suspicious papers.
It later emerged that during December 2021 Laliotis had created a fake Microsoft Outlook account in Tsichlis’ name, linked to his own Gmail account. The account was then used to send bogus letters of recommendation to prospective employers. Fortunately, one of the companies receiving the faked letter, Revirtx, thought it could be a scam and emailed Tsichlis to check. On discovering what had happened, Tsichlis became worried about his reputation and that of Ohio State University. He then reported the issue to the University police, who issued a warrant for Laliotis’ arrest.
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