Geoggrey Girnun, sentenced to prison for stealing cancer research funds

A former Stony Brook University professor who admitted that he had stolen $225,000 in cancer research grant money to pay his mortage and other personal expenses was sentenced to a year and a day in prison Tuesday.

Cancer researcher Geoffrey Girnun, 49, a former associate professor of pathology at Stony Brook, told U.S. District Judge Denis R. Hurley that he had brought shame to his family and cancer research colleagues -- and that he would spend the rest of his life trying to atone for his crime.

"I need to learn to make amends and become a better person," Girnun told Hurley during a sentencing hearing conducted by telephone because of coronavirus concerns.

Girnun was arrested in September 2019 and charged with theft of state and federal government funds, wire fraud and money laundering. He pleaded pleaded guilty to a single count of theft of government funds as part of a deal with federal prosecutors in January.

Federal prosecutors said Girnun stole approximately $78,000 in National Institutes of Health funds that were earmarked for cancer research and about $147,000 from the Stony Brook Foundation and state-sponsored grants, The theft began in December 2013, shortly after Girnun was hired by the university, and continued until December 2017. Girnun used the money to pay his mortgage and other personal expenses, prosecutors said.

Girnun created shell companies that billed the National Institutes of Health and Stony Brook for research-related equipment and services that were never provided, according to prosecutors. After receiving payment in the shell companies, Girnun transferred the funds to his personal bank accounts.

Michelle Bulls, director of the NIH Office for Policy for Extramural Research Administration, said before the ex-professor was sentenced that Girnun’s theft robbed funds that other researchers could have used help cancer patients and eroded public trust in medical researchers.