Law School Warns of Impostor Student, May Have Also Faked Medical Background
A man outed as an impostor law student Friday may be the same person who pleaded guilty to impersonating a physician’s assistant in Florida in 2001.
Officials at the University of Notre Dame Law School warned students Friday that a man posing as a law student had used the school’s services and interacted with several people there, WNDU.com reports. The school identified the man as Gary Stearley, an alias also used by a man who pleaded guilty in 2001 to impersonating a physician’s assistant, according to a 2001 story in the Florida Times-Union.
Police believe Stearley is the same person involved in the Jacksonville, Fla., case, WNDU.com says. The television station interviewed Stearley’s two roommates, in South Bend, Ind., who said they learned of the scam while watching television with Stearley on Saturday.
The roommates, Allan Klein and Justin Baker, had decided to tell Stearley on Sunday morning that he would have to move out, only to discover that he had already left. He took his laptop with him, but left many items behind. “There must be thousands of dollars worth of Notre Dame textbooks, in his room, like it’s almost like he believed that he was a student,” Baker told WNDU.
The Florida Times-Union interviewed Malachi Stearley, who also goes by the name Gary Stearley, in 2001. He told the newspaper he was able to walk into a Jacksonville hospital pretending to be a doctor by explaining to a nurse that he had left his ID in the car.
Prosecutors said Stearley spent about three weeks visiting three different hospitals in the area while pretending to have a medical background. The hospitals say he did not treat any patients. A charge of impersonating a doctor was dropped as part of a plea agreement; he was sentenced to six months in jail after pleading guilty to impersonating a physician’s assistant, according to the Times-Union.
He has “pulled similar stunts in hospitals in other parts of the country,” the Times-Union story said.
