Phillip Calderon, the man who allegedly posed as a Binghamton University student, pleaded not guilty to a third-degree charge of criminal possession of a forged instrument and a second-degree charge of falsifying business records Tuesday morning in Vestal Town Court.
Calderon, 37, who was never a student at BU, was the president of BU’s Off Campus College Council and held an executive position on the Board of Directors for Off Campus College Transport. He was charged earlier this month with falsifying his date of birth on both his OCCT application and on his federal I-9 form, in addition to having an altered BU student ID card.
Calderon’s next court date has not yet been determined.
‘He has not been scheduled,’ said Vestal Town Court Clerk Linda Vail. The trial ‘probably won’t be until early in the new year,’ she added.
Calderon’s lawyer, Matthew Butler of Vestal’s Butler & Butler LLP, could not be reached for comment.
Both crimes are Class A misdemeanors and if convicted, Calderon could serve up to two years in prison.
According to BU officials, they began investigating Calderon when an 18-year-old BU student accused him of sexual assault in September. He was also accused of a similar crime in January 2009, when a male student filed an incident report claiming that Calderon had drugged and raped him.
Neither case was brought to trial.
Before coming to Binghamton, Calderon attended the University at Albany for three consecutive semesters from 2005 to 2006. There, he was charged with first-degree rape and a felony, after allegedly providing a male under the age of 21 with alcohol. At his lawyer’s advice, he entered a guilty plea for third-degree sexual abuse and served one month in prison.
Calderon also served two years in prison in California after he pleaded guilty to six felony charges in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County in 1992. The charges ‘ three counts of assault with a deadly weapon and three counts of throwing substances at a vehicle ‘ are both felonies in Los Angeles.