The Rector of the Police Academy Plagiarized over Two Thirds of His Doctoral Thesis

Professor Adrian Iacob, Rector of the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” Police Academy in Bucharest, plagiarized about 70% of the doctoral thesis he defended in 2007 – at the same institution that he is currently running.

He may also simultaneously hold the most number of official roles encountered in an individual who works in university-level military education.

He is a professor as well as the Rector of the Police Academy, holding the rank of police officer. He is a full member of the Academy of National Security Sciences (ASSN) and, last but not least, he is the Vice-President of the Military, Intelligence and Public Order Commission of the CNATDCU – the institution that has been empowered, among others, to investigate plagiarism claims in doctoral theses.

The dissertation that awarded Adrian Iacob the title of doctor in Public Order and National Security – and which ultimately gave him the possibility to ascend the hierarchical ladder of the Academy – is a slew of paragraphs, sentences or even full pages that were directly copied from other sources.

His PhD supervisor was Professor Costică Voicu, who in 2007, held the position that Adrian Iacob holds today: Rector of the Police Academy.

In addition, Voicu is one of the founders of the doctoral field of Public Order and National Security, which he established together with Gabriel Oprea and Ioan Dascălu. Although it does not correspond to any scientific field of studies, this new science brought about more than 313 doctors since it was created in 2002.

And it is not only Adrian Iacob’s doctoral dissertation that violates the rules of academic integrity. I discovered four other books, which he authored that are put together with the use of his previously published works, which indicate various incidences of self-plagiarism.

In a recent interview PressOne interview with Minister Ecaterina Andronescu, when she was asked if a rector who plagiarized his dissertation should remain in office, she rhetorically answered by posing two other questions: How much authority do you, as rector, have before the academic community? What authority do you have to be able to guide the university in the right direction?

Internal investigations done by the Police Academy

Last week, in a section of the Police Academy’s website that is not at all readily visible to the public, a press release announcing the investigation of the dissertations belonging to the Rector, Vice-Rectors, Deans and other heads of services was put up.

According to the press release, the Board of Directors of the Police Academy took this decision by unanimous vote, at the request of the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ management team, for the purpose of “clarifying all allegations published in the press and in the online environment”.

“The anti-plagiarism investigation of the doctoral theses of (sic – n.r.) of the aforementioned persons will be care out regardless of the year when the theses were defended or by the university where these studies were completed”, the press release states.

As a result of this procedure, Rector Adrian Iacob gave us the following statement on Sunday, March 24, during the day:

“I wanted them to eliminate any suspicion about myself, personally, and the people who hold positions of management within the institution.”

As for his doctoral thesis, he said only the following: “I will read the article tomorrow, and all of the points you have brought forth will go to the Ethics Committee of the Academy, to be verified”.
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So far, the media has released the fact that ten doctoral dissertations, which were defended at the Police Academy were plagiarized.

At the end of 2018, the Institution’s management announced the initiation of a dissertation verification process, after the Interior Minister, Carmen Dan, requested that all the dissertations, which ultimately awarded individuals with the title of doctor between 2007-2001, be investigated.

Ultimately, the decision was made to investigate dissertations that were defended during the 2011-2017 timeframe- and not the one indicated by the Minister, 2007-2011. Why was this interval chosen and why wasn’t the Minister’s mandate respected?

An official answer does not exist, but during this timeframe, most of the professors who currently lecture at the Police Academy defended their doctoral theses.

In November 2018, Rector Mihail Marcoci made an announcement stating that 55 of the 149 theses that were being investigated – defended during the 2011-2017 period at the Police Academy – “could be plagiarized”.

According to an official response received from the Police Academy’s Press Office, 287 doctoral theses had been defended in the 2011-2017 time period.

However, only 149 of the 287 dissertations made it into the internal investigation.

When asked why not all the 287 dissertations were verified, Rector Marcoci said that 54 of them do not exist in Word format in the archive of the Police Academy, and another 84 were defended between 2016 and 2017, when running dissertations through a plagiarism verification program was already compulsory.

According to Marcoci, the Police Academy sent official correspondence to the 54 doctors whose theses were not found in Word format, asking them to send an electronic copy to the institution.

Who is Adrian Iacob?

Professor Adrian Iacob is 100% a product of the Police Academy.

In 1998, he graduated from the Department of Legal Sciences of the Academy, and in April 1999 he became a teaching assistant at the University . He was then an assistant professor (2000-2004), lecturer (2004-2007), permanent lecturer (2007-2016), and from 2016 onwards, he has been in the official position of university professor and doctoral supervisor.

He obtained his doctoral degree in 2007, after which he began advancing his career by working his way up the echelons of the academic hierarchy, and also within the Police Academy’s management.

He was first of all appointed the Manager of the Department of Public Order (2007-2011), and from 2011 to 2016 he directed, from the position of Dean, the Police School, the most important educational institution in the Academy.

In 2017, he was appointed Director of the Council of University Doctoral Studies, that is the official structure, which runs the two doctoral schools in the Police Academy – Law and Public Order and National Security.

In 2018 he became the Rector of the Police Academy, a position that was given to him by the current Minister of the Interior, Carmen Dan. She is also the one who, during the national celebrations on December 1, 2018, advanced him to the rank of police quester.

Adrian Iacob is also a member of the controversial Academy of National Security Sciences (ASSN), an institution founded by Gabriel Oprea and George Maior. (Details, here.)

By statute, ASSN members should be individuals with notable achievements in the field of military science. In his case, a good part of the scientific work is a series of plagiarized and self-plagiarized works.

Membership in the ASSN awards Adrian Iacob with a 2,700 lei monthly salary for the rest of his life. According to his declaration of wealth statement, the ASSN gave him 16,200 lei in 2015, 32,400 lei in 2016 and 34,204 lei in 2017.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, Adrian Iacob is also Vice-President of the CNATDCU’s Committee on Military Sciences, Intelligence and Public Order.

As a member of this Commission, he pronounces himself on plagiarism claims concerning doctoral dissertations defended at the Police Academy, at the SRI Academy or at the “Carol I” National Defense University.

Moreover, he makes decisions to leave or withdraw doctoral titles on which the suspected plagiarism is considered.

Plagiarism

The dissertation that awarded Adrian Iacob with the title of doctor in 2007 is entitled “Organized Crime and Police Cooperation between States”.

The paper is 277 page, without including the bibliography. It was also published in book format in 2007, at the Sitech Publishing House in Craiova, but under the title “The Fight Against Organized Crime”.

While I was verifying the thesis, I used a copy of it in Word format, which I also compared with the book that was published in 2007.

Like other individuals who plagiarized in their doctoral theses, Adrian Iacob also copied the footnotes exactly as they were written in the original texts.

Moreover, he even took over the spelling and format from the original texts – bolded words and sentences, published in italics or underlined, as well as other symbols.

Another detail that attracts attention: 50 of the 63 foreign authors that have been published in the bibliography are “out of the womb”; they are not at all mentioned in the work.

Plagiarism is defined as using other people’s content or ideas and applying them without the use of citations.

A citation must contain two elements that are simultaneously enforced: quotation marks should encompass the sentences that were taken from another source. Additionally, the text should make a specific reference regarding the original source of the content.

In Rector Adrian Iacob’s dissertation, I encountered several incidences in which he makes references to the sources from which he plagiarized, but does not place the word-for-word copied content within quotation marks.

Moreover, in some parts of the dissertation, he incorrectly reference the plagiarized parts by putting the wrong page numbers in order to mask the fact that he had copied directly from the source.

The evidence I have gathered reveals that about 70% of Rector Adrian Iacob’s PhD thesis was plagiarized.

Even the introduction of the thesis is plagiarized, taken directly from pages 11-12 of the book called “Globalization of Child Trafficking”, authored by Ion Chipăilă and published by the Sitech Publishing House in Craiova in 2006. This book, in turn, raises certain suspicions about plagiarism.

Chapter One

I found the exact same content from the first page of Chapter One of the dissertation entitled “The Concept of Organized Ciime”, plagiarized in many doctoral theses and scientific articles, including Laura Codruța Kövesi’s doctoral dissertation.

This page is reused in no less than three books that were written by Adrian Iacob, together with a few other co-authors. Additionally, it also appeared in his doctoral thesis.

Precisely because this content is used in other works, I attempted to uncover its original source.

The oldest source that contains this exact content was found in the book “Police and Contravention Law”, written by Stancu Șerb, Constantin Drăghici, Dragoș-Andrei Ignat and Adrian Iacob. The book was published in 2003 by the Tritonic Publishing House.

The exact same page appears in the introduction of the book “Organized Crime”, written by Adrian Iacob and Constantin Victor Drăghici. It was published in 2006 at Tritonic Publishing House.

Adrian Iacob’s doctoral dissertation, published under the title “Fight Against Organized Crime” at the Sitech Publishing House in Craiova, also contains the exact same page in Chapter One.

Together with Constantin Victor Drăghici, Rector Adrian Iacob also authors the book “Police Cooperation Between States in the Field of Organized Crime”, published in 2009 at the Sitech Publishing House in Craiova.
And this book begins with precisely the same page as well.

A section of all content of all these pages is copied from pages 127-128 of the book “International Criminal Law and International Crimes”, written by Grigore Geamănu and published in 1977 at the Romanian Academy. Even the footnotes used in Geamănu’s book are directly copied.

For example, if you look at the paragraph below, which might pass as a citation taken from Stefan Glaser, it is, in fact, a fragment from Geamanu’s book that is copied word-for-word.

“Another lawyer, Stefan Glaser, considers international crime to be << an action that is contrary to international law and so damaging to the interests defended by this right, that states in common agreement attribute criminal character to it, while demanding criminal repression.”

Sections II, III, IV and V of Chapter One of the thesis, in other words, 44 subsequent pages, are completely plagiarized from the book “Globalization of Child Trafficking”, written by Ion Chipăilă and published at the Sitech Publishing House in 2006.

While looking for the original source of the first chapter of Rector Adrian Iacob’s dissertation, I discovered another interesting fact. The sections of the book that Iacob plagiarized are, in turn, also plagiarized.

Thus, I came across evidence showing that in the book “Globalization of Child Trafficking”, two other books were plagiarized.

Here, I am referring to the books “Fighting Organized Crime. Evolution of Typologies, Legislation, Particularities ”(volume 1), written by Damian Miclea in 2004 and published at the Publishing House of the Ministry of Administration and Interior as well as the book “Organized Crime in the Business Field ”, by Costică Voicu, Adriana Voicu and Ioan Geamănu, published in 2006 at the Pildner & Pildner Publishing House in Târgoviște.

In the window below, you can scroll through the 44 pages of Adrian Iacob’s first chapter within his doctoral thesis and which are completely plagiarized.

On the margins, I made reference to the original sources. The quotes that are copied are marked with yellow and green, to differentiate their original sources.

The book “Globalization of Child Trafficking” is not mentioned in any of the footnotes of the 45 consecutive pages plagiarized nor is it mentioned in the bibliography of the thesis.

Chapter Two

Chapter Two of the dissertation, entitled “The Main Way in Which Organized Crime is Manifested”, is plagiarized according to the same pattern, but it originates from other sources.

Section I of this chapter, “Terrorism as a Way of Manifesting Organized crime”, contains segments that were copied from the book “International Terrorism”, written by Gheorghe Carp and published in 2005 at the Ministry of Administration and Interior Publishing.

The content on page 57 and pages 61-65 of the dissertation is directly taken from pages 24 and 41-47 respectively of the book “International Terrorism”.

Section III of Chapter Two – “Money Laundering with Dirty Money” – has sections copied from the book “Organized Crime in the Business Field”, written by Costică Voicu, Adriana Camelia Voicu and Ioan Geamănu, published in 2006 at the Pildner & Pildner Publishing House .

Specifically, the content of pages 73-77 of the dissertation are a series of excerpts that were copied from here and there from different parts of pages 35, 37-38, 40, 45, 67, 68, 69 of “Organized Crime …”.

Chapter Three

Chapter Three of Adrian Iacob’s dissertation, entitled “Police Cooperation Between States for the Prevention and Fight against Organized Crime”, is plagiarized from several preferred sources.

In Section II, entitled “Initiatives and Concerns of International Bodies Working in the Prevention and Fight against Organized Crime”, the content on pages 104-107 is partially plagiarized from pages 8-13 of the book “Instruments of International Cooperation in the Field of Capitalizing the Means of Probation in Criminology”, written by Ioan Hurdubaie and published at the Era Publishing House in Bucharest in 2006.

Another book from which the Rector of the Police Academy plagiarized content (pages 108-109) is “Crime and International Organizations”, written by Ion Suceavă and Florin Coman, published in 1997 at the Romartexim Publishing House in Bucharest (pages 84, 85, 92, 93 , 96).

In the third section of Chapter Three of the dissertation, entitled “International Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters”, dozens of pages are plagiarized from the following two books:

• “Police Cooperation in Romania”, written by Mihai Gheorghe Stoica and Constantin Cristian Cătuți, published in 2006 at the Paperp Print Invest Publishing House in Bucharest (pages 30-32 and 33);

• Instruments of International Cooperation in the Field of Capitalizing the Means of Probation in Criminology”, written by Ioan Hurdubaie, 2006, and published at the Era Publishing House in Bucharest (from pages 49-53, 60-70, 73-81, 86-90, 93-103, 107-108, 112-121).

Section IV of Chapter Three- “Police Cooperation Between States at an International Level and on the European Continent” – is also partially plagiarized from the following books:

• “Police Cooperation in Romania”, written by Mihai Gheorghe Stoica and Constantin Cristian Cătuți, published in 2006 at the Paper Print Invest Publishing House in Bucharest (from pages 47-50, 67-90, 84-85, 88 and 89);

• “Crime and International Organizations”, written by Ion Suceavă and Florin Coman, published in 1997 at Romartexim Publishing House, in Bucharest (from pages 199-200);

• “Police and Contraventional Law”, written by Stancu Șerb, Constantin Drăghici, Dragoș-Andrei Ignat and Adrian Iacob, published in 2003 at the Tritonic Publishing House (from pages 264-267, 270-271).

Chapter Four

Hefty- sized segments that are plagiarized can also be found in Chapter Four of Adrian Iacob’s doctoral thesis, entitled “The Role and Contribution of Romania in Achieving Police Cooperation between states in 0reventing and Combating International Organized Crime”.

For example, in Sections I, II and III, I found dozens of pages plagiarized from the book “Police Cooperation in Romania”, written by Mihai Gheorghe Stoica and Constantin Cristian Cătuți (from pages 51-52, 98, 100-101, 103, 105-109, 111-113, 114-117, 118, 119-121, 156, 157).

Chapter Five

Chapter Five of the dissertation, entitled “Specific Elements of Perspective on Police Cooperation Between States”, is also largely plagiarized in the book “Police Cooperation in Romania”, authored by Mihai Gheorghe Stoica and Constantin Cristian Cătuți.

The content of this final part of Iacob’s doctoral dissertation is copied from various paragraphs found in Stoica and Catuţi’s book (from pages 125-127, 129-130, 128, 127, 167, 169, 95-96, 139-140, 165- 176, 164).

In this video, you can quickly scan through all of the plagiarized sections in Adrian Iacob’s dissertation (highlighted in yellow and green):

Plagiarism

Professor Adrian Iacob did not just plagiarize his doctoral thesis. Other works that he has written are also plagiarized or self-plagiarized.

The first book that raises suspicions is “Organized Crime”, which he co-wrote together with Constantin Victor Drăghici. It was published in 2006 at the Tritonic Publishing House.

With slight differences in format, the content of this paper can be found in other books that were published later on.

In this book, there are several pages where the content is repeated. For example, the text on pages 16-18 is repeated word for word on pages 64 to 68.

Part of the text of this book has been added to the content of the doctoral dissertation, through interwoven paragraphs, pages, subchapters and chapters..

From the beginning of the thesis and all the way to page 128, the content of the book “Organized Crime” is copied word for word in the book “Police Cooperation Between States in the Field of Organized Crime”, also written by Adrian Iacob and Constantin Victor Drăghici, published in 2009 at Sitech Publishing House in Craiova.

Self-plagiarism is one of the serious ways of violating university ethics.

Self-plagiarism is committed when an author publishes works (scientific article, research study, book chapter or even book) twice or more times, without mentioning that the respective text had been previously published and without with the correct referencing elements from the scientific journal or book where the text first appeared.

Compiled self-plagiarism

This isn’t only one example of self-plagiarism that the Rector of the Police Academy is guilty of.

The introduction of the book “Instruments of Police Cooperation”, which Adrian Iacob published in 2014 (that is, seven years after he defended his doctoral thesis) was taken from the introduction of his doctoral dissertation. It was also published at the Sitech Publishing House in Craiova.

The first chapter of the book (from page 11 to page 52) “Instruments of Police Cooperation”, is identical to the first chapter of the doctoral thesis.

Chapter Two of this book (from pages 53 to 65) is identical to Chapter One of the book “Prevention of Crime”, which Adrian Iacob co-wrote together with Constantin Victor Drăghici, and which was published at the Sitech Publishing House (on page 7 on page 26).

Chapter Three of the “Police Cooperation Tools” (pages 66 to 100) takes the content from pages 64-112 of the book “Organized Crime” and copies it word for word.

Chapters Four and Five from the book “The Instruments of Cooperation…” (beginning on page 109 to page 130) are copied directly from his doctoral thesis and are published under the title “Fight Against Organized Crime” (from pages 59 to 96).

And Chapter Four (from page 131 to page 148) is also copied from the doctoral thesis, beginning from page 101 and all the way to 122.

Also, Chapter Ten (from page 204 to page 210) is directly copied from Adrian Iacob’s doctoral thesis (the content is taken from pages 267 to 275).
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Incidences of self-plagiarism are also found in two other works of the Rector of the Police Academy’s works.

The first two chapters (from page 7 to page 97) of the book “Prevention of Crime”, written by Adrian Iacob and Constantin Victor Drăghici, published in 2008 at Sitech Publishing House, are directly copied, word for word, from page 83 to page 140 of the book “Police Activities in Multinational Operations”, written by Luca Iamandi, Adrian Iacob and David Ungureanu, also published at Sitech’s Publishing House in Craiova and also in 2008.
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Constantin Victor Drăghici is Chief Commissioner of the Police and university lecturer at the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” Police Academy. He holds the position of Deputy Director of the National College of Internal Affairs, a structure within the Police Academy that is built on the model of the National Defense College from UNAp, or that of the National Intelligence College of the SRI Academy. (Details, here).