Former MIT professor, tech guru John Donovan Sr. sentenced to 2 years in state prison for forgery

The former MIT professor and millionaire who made his fortune in creating and flipping tech companies, holding technical patents and, later, land holdings will serve two years to two years and a day in state prison for forging documents related to his late son’s will.

John J. Donovan Sr., 80, of Hamilton, in 2016 submitted more than two dozen forged documents to the South Essex Registry of Deeds in Salem in an attempt to gain his late son John J. Donovan III’s properties, an effort that would have swindled his son’s widow and his own grandchildren out of millions. He was convicted in Salem Superior Court on May 3 and sentenced by Judge Salim Tabit on Monday.

“Mr. Donovan is 80 years old and undoubtedly contributed much to society, but for 20 years he has left a trail of tears everywhere he has been,” Tabit said at sentencing, according to the Salem News. “It is my sincere hope that trail ends today.”

After a nearly four-week trial, Donovan was found guilty of 12 counts: seven counts of forgery, uttering, filing of false documents with the Registry of Deeds, obtaining a signature by false pretense, false statement under the penalty of perjury and attempted larceny by false pretense.

The younger Donovan died at 43 on April 25, 2015, after a battle with adrenal cancer, according to his obituary, leaving behind a wife and two children. He was a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Business School, owner of the Manchester Athletic Club and a philanthropist. His passions included farming, teaching and flying.

This isn’t the tech guru’s first brush with the law. In 2007, Donovan Sr. was convicted for filing a false police report that another of his sons, James, had hired Russian-accented, balaclava-wearing hitmen — including a “big guy,” according to his claim — to kill him.

Police found him at around 8:30 p.m. on Dec. 16, 2005, shot in the side and lying across the front of his white minivan in the parking lot of his business, Cambridge Executive Enterprises on Vassar Street, his feet dangling out of the open driver-side door.

Prosecutors effectively proved the wound was self inflicted and the manhunt for the phony gunmen cost taxpayers up to $100,000 at the time, then-Attorney General Martha Coakley estimated, adding that it had been “treated initially as the kind of case that would bring terror to a community.”

Prosecutors then suggested Donovan serve six months in jail and pay for the cost of the investigation and trial, but, citing Donovan’s age and lack of a prior criminal record, Middlesex Superior Court Judge Kenneth J. Fishman sentenced him instead to two years of probation, a $625 fine and 200 hours of community service.

The Herald found that Donovan was allowed to serve out his “community service” on a nonprofit trail system that includes part of his family owned land regularly used for fancy North Shore fox hunts.

“The defendant’s actions in the instant case demonstrate that a solely probationary sentence does not serve as a deterrent to commit future behavior,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo for the current case.

They added that their recommended sentence “balances and recognizes the fact that the defendant has been convicted at 80 years old and that any incarcerated sentence is significant.”