WHITE PLAINS – A Norwalk, Connecticut man was sentenced in Westchester County Court on Wednesday to 10 years in state prison for posing as a professor at Westchester Community College and offering to train the students for employment with international security firms.

Claiming to be “Dr. Hunter,” Lawrence Bottone, 54, also posed as a professor at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut.

Bottone, who pled guilty to six counts of violent felony assault, required the students who joined his program to give their oath of silence as to what would take place in the program; each of the victims was subjected to physical abuse.

Some of his methods including whippings and beatings while the victims were naked and covered with vegetable oil, and the painful insertion of pins and in one case a scalpel under fingernails. The crimes occurred at Westchester Community College’s Valhalla campus.

In May 2010, one of the victims reported Bottone’s criminal conduct to police and the investigation was begun during which Westchester County Police recovered documents related to the crimes and a duffel bag that contained a scalpel, needles, rope, strapping tape, vegetable oil, and dental instruments among other items.

Bottone was previously convicted of assault in Connecticut in 1997 and as a result was sentenced as a second felony offender.