News - Local News

POSTED: Wednesday, Aug. 06, 2008

Bellingham engineering contractor may have phony degree

BELLINGHAM - City officials have put an on-call engineering contract with a local firm on hold after The Bellingham Herald disclosed that the company's vice president may not have legitimate credentials.

The vice president of Apollo Geophysics, Matthew C. Ringstad, appears to be on a list of people who purchased fake degrees from a diploma mill based out of Spokane. The list of more than 9,800 buyers was made public by the Spokane Spokesman-Review, though the U.S. Department of Justice had previously refused to give it up. A trusted source leaked the list to the Spokesman-Review, said Jim Camden, one of the reporters who worked on the story.

"The list is as accurate as the federal government made it," Camden said when asked how confident he was of the list's veracity. "It's a federal government-compiled database as a result of their investigation (into the mill)."

A Matthew C. Ringstad purchased a bachelor of arts degree, according to the diploma mill list, though no other detail is given.

Matthew Ringstad did not return a phone message left at the Apollo Geophysics office Tuesday, Aug. 5, nor did he or Lynn Ringstad - his wife and company owner and president - return an e-mail from a reporter left the same day. A receptionist at the Apollo office, 314 E. Holly St., Suite 207, said both were not in the office Wednesday, Aug. 6. A reporter got the same response when visiting the office Wednesday.

However, last week Matthew Ringstad told The News Tribune in Tacoma that he wasn't aware of the diploma mill list and pointed out that there are many people with the same name.

But Matthew Ringstad used an e-mail address with the apollogeophysics.com domain in communications with the diploma mill, Camden confirmed.

Apollo Geophysics provides applied geological and geophysical exploration, nondestructive testing, environmental services and equipment rental, according to the company's Web site.

Bellingham's purchasing superintendent, Joan Cady, said that there are no receipts on file to show that the company has actually done any work for the city yet.

However, Ringstad lists in his experience in a request for qualifications document to the city that he performed "geophysical investigation, seismic refraction" and ground penetrating radar work during 2005 renovations to The Federal Building in downtown Bellingham. He was paid $2,500, according to the document. Cady said she believes he worked as a subcontractor under another firm which actually did the work, so the city doesn't have a record of his work.

"Apollo isn't doing any work for us now and won't be until this is resolved," said City Public Works Director Dick McKinley.

Bellingham Mayor Dan Pike said that while the contract is on hold with the company, it's not yet canceled.

"For one thing, there's the principle of innocent until proven guilty," Pike said. "Does he have other certification that legitimizes his qualifications from a credentialed school? Was there any fraud involved?

"There's a number of questions that I can't answer right now," the mayor said. "Obviously the integrity of our consultants is important to us, just as is the integrity of our employees."

A Clyde A. Ringstad also shows up on the list as having purchased a fake Ph.D. Clyde A. Ringstad also worked at one time for Apollo Geophysics, and gave a presentation to the state Department of Transportation on vibration monitoring for structures in 2004. Matthew and Lynn Ringstad were also at that presentation, according to WSDOT documents.

Camden said Clyde Ringstad also used an Apollo Geophysics e-mail address to communicate with the diploma mill.

Clyde A. Ringstad was reached by phone Tuesday, Aug. 5, but seemed to have trouble hearing. He handed the phone to his wife, who said he had been mowing the lawn and would call back later. Ringstad never returned the phone call. An e-mail message sent to him seeking comment also was not returned.

Matthew Ringstad has offered up different versions of his educational background. He told The News Tribune that he earned a political science degree in California, but that he would "rather not say" what college it came from.

On the application to get the work with the city of Bellingham, Ringstad is listed as the company's senior geophysicist, and states that he has a bachelor of science degree in computer science from Whitman College, a liberal arts college in Walla Walla. Ringstad only attended Whitman College for one year in 1990, he never picked a major and never graduated, according to a registration assistant in Whitman College's registrar's office.

The same application states that Ringstad did site response and seismic hazard assessment work for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory at the Hanford nuclear site.

Ringstad is 36, according to voter registration records. His biography page at Apollo Geophysics' Web site states: "Matthew brings 20 years of experience in designing and implementing Geophysical Field exploration programs and developing state of the art data analysis programs and algorithms." On the application to the city, Ringstad states he has 23 years of experience, making him a young teen when he started.

Western Washington University confirmed that Lynn Ringstad earned both bachelor's and master's degrees in geology, as she listed on the application to the city of Bellingham. She is also a licensed geologist, which was confirmed using the state Department of Licensing's online database.

Apollo Geophysics is on the engineering rosters of several other municipalities, including the city of Vancouver, Wash., and King County. It has applied to do work in Portland, Ore., too, according to records on the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce's Web site. It's unclear if the company has actually done work for Vancouver, though Brian Carlson, the city's public works director, said he didn't think so. The company did work for King County during a 2004 bridge project, according to a report prepared for the King County Department of Transportation by another consultant.

Matthew Ringstad was the field manager on behalf of the company during that project.

Reach Sam Taylor at sam.taylor@bellinghamherald.com or call 715-2263. Read his Politics Blog at TheBellinghamHerald.com/blogs.