Con Man and Chameleon: A Fake PhD Holder's Attempt to Infiltrate German Politics
Even a conviction for the fake PhD could not stop him.
Yan St-Pierre is a seasoned counter-terrorism expert who has been working in the fields of terrorism, rebellions, and protests since he was 17 years old. He advises state governments, police forces and defense departments. He’s an authority on pandemic response, protective barriers, and panpsychism. Or at least that’s what he wants you to believe.
Academia holds PhD dissertations in high regard and there are careful, well-funded, and overlapping efforts to catalogue and preserve these dissertations. That makes PhD degrees inherently one of the most verifiable items about a person. By the time someone gets around to successfully claiming a fake doctorate title, they have most often gotten away with a host of other deceptions and wild exaggerations. Therefore, investigating fake PhDs almost always brings up other instances of fraud, corruption, deception, or trickery.
Mr St-Pierre has come to the attention of this blog, of course, because of his false claims to academic achievements that he never earned. But he piled on so much more that it’s hard to believe he is still out there writing, lecturing, and trying to advise politicians despite all the lies. This is a story of charm and deception.
Yan St-Pierre is the CEO of Mosecon, a consulting firm with six employees, operating out of a home office in the center of Berlin’s counter-culture neighborhood Kreuzberg. Only one person at Mosecon appears to do all of the work: the CEO. Nevertheless, it offers a comprehensive list of services that rivals that of the largest firms in the world. From counter-terrorism advice, pandemic response, emergency management, kidnapping and ransom negotiations, peace building and negotiations, foreign policy papers, organized crime expertise, drug smuggling operations, sex trafficking and more. Mosecon provides these services in Europe, North America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia (link). It advises any level of government from presidents and prime ministers to city administrators. Whatever you need, Mosecon has the answer.
The fake PhD
It is therefore no surprise when some of Mr St-Pierre’s associates started asking questions about this curious setup. A few of them started looking deeper and - feeling duped and misled - filed a grievance with the local authorities. In 2020, a Berlin prosecutor investigated and found a slew of evidence pointing to title fraud for using a false PhD title and document forgery. St-Pierre had submitted a forged letter to German immigration authorities from the University of Geneva certifying his doctorate title. However, the letter was signed by a Mr Pascal Garcin, who had in fact retired two years prior to the issuance of the letter.
Subsequent inquiries at the University of Geneva uncovered the rejection letter Yan St-Pierre had received from the university. A panel of professors had evaluated his thesis proposal and given a detailed and scathing evaluation of the quality of his work. His provisional enrollment was cancelled in 2007.
What St-Pierre did afterwards is a bit murky. An obscure movie about the drug-fueled techno music culture has incidental 2007 footage of Yan St-Pierre in a crowd of partygoers. For this appearance St-Pierre made sure to create an IMDb entry for himself as an actor in the movie (link).
Conning the conferences
But what is clear is that Mr. St-Pierre did not move on with his life and could not publicly admit that he had been rejected from the University of Geneva. He kept up the ruse of a hard-working PhD student, and appeared at professional conferences worldwide to present talks on his rejected thesis topic. In a stunning, well-planned performance spanning many years, he presented at the following conferences, shamelessly masquerading as a PhD student from the University of Geneva that had rejected him earlier (link1) (link2) (link3):
Mr St-Pierre made numerous connections during this time trying to build up a network of industry insiders and political actors. He skillfully dodged questions about his education with superficially plausible answers and cordial invitations to rounds of beer. The confidence scam worked with conference organizers and at least two book authors: University of Pittsburgh professor Michael Goodhart (link) and German academic Anja Mihr (link). They invited him to write a chapter in their book “Human Rights in the 21st Century”, where they introduced him as a PhD student, and - without even a cursory check with his supposed university - allowed St-Pierre to publish a version of his thesis topic that had been deemed academically insufficient (link).
Left-wing activism
Right around this time, invigorated by the success and acceptance of his left-wing academic writing, St-Pierre unfolded as a an outspoken, angry, and productive left-wing activist in Berlin. He raged against a “fascist system” that oppressed everyday working people on a blog called “Molotov” (link). Islamic terrorism, he muses on the blog, is an invention of Western governments intent on oppressing their citizenry by implementing restrictive security measures. He also started a movie studio named HolyRock to produce a series glorifying Berlin’s violent counter-culture movement (link1) (link2) (link3), and became a figurehead in the Occupy protest scene, leading groups of protesters in rage-filled chants against the 1% (link1) (link2). Also intimately involved in these efforts was Yan’s girlfriend and future Mosecon owner Susanne Schröder, who was an actress in the movie project and accompanied him to protest activities.
This was also the time St-Pierre first appeared with his fake doctorate, just when he would have graduated from the University of Geneva - had he been accepted.
St-Pierre’s more overt activism came to an abrupt end when he accepted a sales job at marketing firm Coeus Solutions in early 2012.
His radical activism was now constrained to the digital world on his YmanPol Twitter account and the Molotov blog.
An even more jarring turn of events came in September 2012 when he started a job as Director of Programmes with the New Security Foundation. “Dr.” Yan St-Pierre flew to Africa with founder and ex-MI6 spy Harold Elletson, and organized a high-caliber security conference in Berlin attended by intelligence chief Baroness Neville-Jones (link).
How did this left-wing radical turned sales rookie land a job at the New Security Foundation? The circumstances aren’t clear, but Susanne Schröder simultaneously started a job at ICWE, a marketing company run by the then-girlfriend of NSF’s founder Harold Elletson. People with inside knowledge into St-Pierre’s life say that he charmed his way into the job using forged documents and references from people he had previously duped.
Founding of Mosecon
After a short stint at the New Security Foundation, both St-Pierre and Schröder were let go from the firm, allegedly for poor performance. Undeterred and with little more than a few months of professional work experience, they soon started their own consulting firm Mosecon with a nearly identical approach to the New Security Foundation. St-Pierre did not even bother to switch Twitter accounts, opting to simply rename his New Security Foundation Twitter account handle from NSF_StPierre to MOSECON_Yan.
Mosecon initially started with a luncheon series, a monthly newsletter, plans to organize discussion events, and a broad social media presence out of the gate. An organizational format that appears to be straight from the playbook of intelligence agencies on how to set up a think tank front.
The quick downscaling of Mosecon activities, and what has become of the firm today betray the fact that the original setup of the company was far beyond St-Pierre’s and Schröder’s organizational capacities, perhaps an organizational concept they copied but were unable to fully implement.
What remained of Mosecon is that Yan St-Pierre sought the spotlight wherever he could, making appearances on Canada’s CBC, the BBC, CNN, France24, and others to comment on any political or security issue. In Mosecon’s founding year 2013, Yan St-Pierre also became an overnight expert in the Nigerian terror group Boko Haram without any academic background or real world experience in the matter. Mosecon even organized a security conference in Africa, NERCT, in its founding year. Clearly a brainchild of Harold Elletson, and perhaps borne out of St-Pierre’s colonial urges to influence African politics and attitudes.
With Mosecon, St-Pierre built an impressive friend network of journalists, NGO contacts, and private consultants. Over the years, he repeatedly and consistently sought the proximity to German politicians and political influencers. Early on, Mosecon announced a partnership with the Berlin Sicherheitsakademie, a well-known breeding ground for right wing thinkers and polemics (link).
St-Pierre tried to establish relationships with numerous centre-right politicians over the years, like then-interior minister Horst Seehofer, member of parliament Roderich Kiesewetter, member of parliament Renata Alt, and Bijan Djir-Sarai who is now the general secretary of Germany’s Free Democratic Party FDP.
St-Pierre attended the Munich Security Conference, gave an interview to ultra-right-wing magazine Breitbart (link), called for the quintupling of the Belgian surveillance state (link), and advised British security forces. In 2019 he made quick friends with fellow fake PhD holder Mitchell Belfer (link), who is an authoritarian regime apologist for Bahrain and for years tried to influence the European Parliament to go soft on human rights violations until his think tank EGIC was booted from the European lobby register.
But at the same time he continued calling for left-wing protest action on his YmanPol Twitter account as “Martin Deranleau” until 2021, continued to live in the counter-culture neighborhood, and fervently called out right-wing extremism on his Mosecon_Yan Twitter account. So who is Yan St-Pierre? The counter-terror expert who advises African warlords, police, and security officials, or the left-wing activist who attends anti-police protests, calls for an “end to obedience”, and more recently, passionately defends climate activists?
Perhaps he hasn’t figured it out himself, but it seems that - like a chameleon - he can blend in perfectly well with whatever audience is willing to give him an ear.
The Conviction
Then in 2020, some of St-Pierre’s colleagues launched a complaint against him and the prosecution started to investigate. Germany’s justice system has many mechanisms that keep people out of prison, or keeps them from formally being convicted. It is therefore remarkable that the prosecutor in Berlin took the unusual step of filing a formal indictment against Mr St-Pierre, a sign of a strong case and indicative of the gravity of the offense.
During the investigation St-Pierre’s doctorate titles started disappearing from the internet. He was formally convicted of title fraud at the end of 2021 (case number “277 Js 3591/20” at the Staatsanwaltschaft Berlin). While legal proceedings were pending, Mosecon restructured and Susanne Schröder became its sole owner with St-Pierre only listed as an employee. The court levied a significant penalty but the total amount was low because it is tied to income. St-Pierre had submitted documents to the court that stated this advisor to heads of state and governments now only earned €1003 per month, well below the poverty line in Berlin.
A few months after the conviction, crime reporters for the German newspaper Die Welt made a story out of the remarkable case and published it in a weekend edition in April 2022 (link).
With his conviction and swindling exposed in the news, who would still do business with Yan St-Pierre or Mosecon? The chances of a professional recovery were slim.
Cue German security consultant Christian Schneider from the Initiative Breitscheidplatz GmbH. He sells protective barriers that prevent access to potential attackers that may use a vehicle to mow down pedestrians. And consulting services on where to place these barriers. Prima facie, a highly ineffective way to mitigate a gruesome attack, as it just prevents vehicle incursions into one of thousands of potential locations in a given city. St-Pierre’s background as a convicted swindler was not a problem for Schneider, as he just needed someone to instill the fear of a terrorist attack into local policymakers, who would then buy his products and services. A similar scheme was successfully used by security consultants after the 9/11 attacks in the US. To this very day, anti-terror bollards litter spaces in front of rural town halls and libraries from West Virginia to Oregon.
Continues to Deceive
And the con man continues to deceive the world about his background, knowledge, and education. For example, Yan St-Pierre has for years been attending the prestigious Munich Security Conference. Or so it seems. In 2020, he even gave an interview to Chinese government-controlled Phoenix TV about his take on the conference proceedings in Munich. In 2023, he wowed his professional audience on LinkedIn with a series of live-posts from inside the conference.
And senior fellow of the Munich Security Conference Nico Lange tweeted a picture of a discussion event at the conference that included high-ranking and influential German politicians. In the audience: Convicted con man Yan St-Pierre. The Tweet was seen by 200,000 people around the world, cementing the impression he was a guest at the Munich Security Conference.
In response to an inquiry, the conference organizers claim that Mr St-Pierre had attended as a member of the public and had never received an invitation to be a guest at the conference. In the exchange with organizers it remained unclear if he had been an invited guest in prior years and only faked his attendance in 2023. And it is also uncertain if Mr St-Pierre’s presence at the security conference means that other, more sophisticated threat actors have been able to gain access to the Munich Security Conference.
To this very day Yan St-Pierre still claims a Master’s degree on his profile on Xing, a professional networking website popular in Germany (link). Why is the Master’s degree a problem? It turns out that he also does not have a Master’s degree. The degree and the master’s thesis that he sometimes cites in his writings are both a work of fiction. At the University of Paris, then called Diderot University, a master’s thesis is written in the second year of the 2-year MA program. St-Pierre only attended for one year. On request, the university confirmed that Yan St-Pierre did not complete an MA.
Yan St-Pierre skillfully and continually comes up with new excuses for his professional contacts: The news story, he claims now, is “fake news”; there never was a conviction; he voluntarily gave up his doctorate title when the university he received it from went bankrupt; powerful Qatari intelligence agents want him harm, and other grandstanding tales of woe. With these carefully spun stories St-Pierre finds not only Christian Schneider but also a number of other supporters even after his public conviction:
Caroline Varin, herself the holder of a fake degree as detailed in a previous story, gets St-Pierre to write a book chapter for her, along with another fake PhD holder Mitchell Belfer (link to book). Birds of a feather…
Professor Dr. Clemens Gause is head of the Verband für Sicherheitstechnik. The organization brings together private security consultants, manufacturers of security technology, and police. Dr. Gause gives St-Pierre a platform, allows him to give presentations to members, and access to decision makers (link1) (link2) (link3). As an academic Dr. Gause knows Mr St-Pierre’s explanations on his PhD degree cannot under any circumstances be true, yet ignores the facts.
France24 is aware of St-Pierre’s dubious background, yet still invites him to give qualified opinions to millions of its viewers (link). In comparison, other news organizations have distanced themselves from St-Pierre.
With Yan St-Pierre’s proven propensity to exaggerate, lie, and forge documents, one important issue remains in question: Is he really the Boko Haram expert that has been cited countless times by Agence France Presse, and a host of international media outlets?
Facts on the ground in the Sahel region are notoriously hard to verify. What if Mr St-Pierre just makes up facts and unnamed sources, or exaggerates numbers of terror incidents? In one interview St-Pierre claims that opium is transformed into meth in the DRC (link). An impossible chemical reaction that could only be plausible to a political science major. In an information vacuum, however, some outlets are happy to accept claims made with confidence (link). But should Yan St-Pierre be trusted to make assessments that he disseminates into the wider political sphere through talks, book chapters, and news appearances? Each organization will have to decide for itself.
Update 1; May 5, 2023: Multiple tipsters contacted the blog and gave additional information. Apparently St-Pierre did not lecture at the Northern Business School, but was involved with them to some degree. It remains unclear what exactly he did there. That section has been changed in the article.
And it was helpfully pointed out that St-Pierre went to Russia at one point (link), and had Russian involvement through a company called orange ‘n’ square, with direct ties to Russian oligarchs. If the Russian government was somehow interested in St-Pierre because of his connections to Harold Elletson, then it is remarkable that his fake degrees were never exposed previously.
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