Vahid Manian, a board director of SSD supplier STEC, has been sacked by employer Broadcom after it was found that he may have conjured academic qualifications out of thin air.

STEC's website lists him as a senior VP of Broadcom. That corporation has him listed as a senior VP of global manufacturing operations. The site's executive bio includes this: "Mr Manian received a BSEE and an MBA from the University of California, Irvine."

Minkow used a private detective firm to check on the truthfulness of Manian's UCI degrees. According to a Mark Fonseca, an official in UCI's registrar office, Manian certainly attended UCI for four years, between September 1979 and August 1983, but didn't graduate as a bachelor of science. There was no record at all of any study by Manian for an MBA.

The Bloomberg report quotes STEC CEO Manouch Moshayedi as saying Manian went to UCI with Moshayedi's brother, and he was sure Manian had graduated. A STEC spokesperson responded to the story saying: "This is the first I am hearing of it, so I will have to look into the matter."

There is no criticism of Manian's work performance in any of this - none at all. You don't get to be a senior manufacturing VP without being able to do the business. Moshayedi considers him extremely competent. However, lying on a statement to the US SEC is not acceptable and, by including Manian's apparently non-existent academic qualifications in some of its filings, Broadcom has transgressed. It has fired Manian as a result. Whether he survives as a STEC board member is now open to doubt. ®

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