St. Catharines, Ont.—Dr. John Crysler’s colleagues in Plattsburgh, N.Y., thought he was dead.

At least, that’s what they were told. A death certificate, dated Dec. 17, 2001, declared suicide the cause.

The pediatrician was only dead on paper. He practised in Ontario for six years before New York’s medical regulator ruled the death certificate a fake, drafted by Crysler himself.

Read more on the Star’s Medical Disorder investigation

A copy of the board’s 2007 disciplinary order and its allegations against him are posted online in New York.

Crysler, the board determined, signed the names of fictitious officials on the death certificate, which he submitted to the Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital and Plattsburgh Pediatrics.

None of this information has been shared with Canadian patients by the Ontario physicians’ college, which granted Crysler his medical licence five months before the date on his forged death certificate. His profile on the college website shows no disciplinary history or restrictions on his licence.

New York’s medical regulator charged Crysler with practising fraudulently, filing a false report and “engaging in conduct which evidences moral unfitness.” In 2007, Crysler, a graduate of Queen’s University’s medical school, formally surrendered his state medical licence.

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In an interview with the Star at his pediatric office in downtown St. Catharines, Crysler said his actions were motivated by a personal issue with a colleague that left him feeling harassed. At Crysler’s request, the Star agreed not to disclose details about the nature of the harassment.

“Eventually, I got to the point where I sent a letter to these people,” Crysler said, referring to the death certificate he sent to his former employers. “Please leave this guy alone … This was not a fraud for financial gain. This was not some means of escaping punishment or avoiding taxes.”

Crysler asked the Star not to publish information about his New York discipline. “Does everything need to be reported? Have you never done anything wrong in your life that your boss wouldn’t like to know about?”

Crysler said the Ontario college knew he surrendered his New York licence.

He said the college ordered him to enrol in a monitoring program for five years, during which he completed psychological assessments, drug and alcohol testing and an ethics course. Crysler said he treated patients throughout this monitoring period.

The college would not confirm this information and refused to comment on the case.

“Their level of enforcement goes beyond what’s available from police,” Crysler said of the college. “They’re more like the SS than they are the humane society.”

Crysler, who described himself as a child psychiatrist, said the college “started a complete new investigation. They talked to every witness down there.”

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The Star spoke with two of Crysler’s former colleagues in Plattsburgh, N.Y. They told a different story.

“His own actions, I think, prevented him from being employed,” said Dr. David Cohen, a pediatrician who once offered Crysler a job and later worked alongside his employers.

Both Cohen and Dr. Clarke Knutson, a former partner at Plattsburgh Pediatrics, who retired from the New York practice just a few years ago, said no one from the Ontario college contacted them to discuss Crysler’s history.

“If they did reach out to me,” Knutson said, “they didn’t reach far enough.”