Bogus Universities & fake degrees

[frags]

A follow up to the discussion we started way back in the little india days. I found this one article dated Jan 2008 about the now famous International Irish University which i was following closely. It was quite an elaborate operation with graduation ceremonies etc.

Now the website is empty.

Source : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7175730.stm

The IIU, which has 5,000 students worldwide and
thousands of graduates, maintains the illusion of a valid education
through its elaborate but highly misleading website.

This illusion is enhanced by the university's continued use of Oxford and Cambridge facilities to stage its award ceremonies.

After each event photographs appear on the IIU website
showing happy students receiving awards at the UK's best seats of
learning.

In Oxford, our journalist and actor secretly filmed the
award ceremony and recorded meetings with university boss and Executive
President Professor Hardeep Singh Sandhu, a Malaysian businessman and
faculty member Dr Edwin Varo.

Dr Varo, told us that the IIU was not bogus and was
registered in Ireland and that it had applied to the government and had
been given approval to use the word university.

In Dublin, Sean O'Foghlu, Chief Executive of the
National Qualifications Authority of Ireland, told BBC London: "To use
the word university in a title it needs approval from our Department of
Education and Science - no such approval has been given by our
department."

During secretly filmed meetings, Professor Sandhu told
our undercover team that the QAC was an "independent body" that
maintained the quality of education in the UK and elsewhere.

Faculty member, Dr Varo explained that the QAC staff:
"Focus more on your curriculum - on your teaching; focus on your
evaluation - they focus on your faculty - who are your faculty - what
amount of real teaching takes place."

The QAC website listed an impressive roll-call of staff
including the QAC Commissioner General and an Acting Commissioner
General.
Our reporter visited the QAC and instead of finding a
commissioner general we found four telephonists fielding calls for
countless companies at yet another virtual office.

A further check at Companies House revealed that far
from the being "independent" the QAC is in fact owned by university
boss Professor Dr Sandhu.

Professor Wooller, a member of the Institute of
Chartered Accountants, owns a £1.2m townhouse in Kensington but spends
most of his time living as a tax exile in Monte Carlo.

Our actor, again posing as a fake academic, arranged to
meet Professor Wooller, at a hotel in Monaco. We secretly filmed this
meeting.
'Dreamt up'
He told our fake academic that the IIU was not "recognised anywhere".
He admitted to our actor that the website was an
illusion: "When you look at the website, it's a figment of someone's
imagination. Someone's dreamt up what a university should look like,
and that's what's on the website."

Professor Wooller told us that students paid a lot of
money to attend the award ceremonies, adding: "If you can mention
Oxford, Cambridge then the whole world thinks that it must be a good
university."

He then said of the university's operation: "The whole
thing's dodgy." He even said that the IIU's governing council, of which
he and Professor Sandhu are both members, did not exist.

A BBC London reporter then confronted Professor Wooller:

Reporter: You said the whole thing is dodgy.
Mr Wooller: It is dodgy!
Reporter: Oh so you admit it's dodgy?
Mr Wooller: Of course it's dodgy.
He also told our reporter that he had been given his professorship by the IIU and that he had bought his "Baron" title.

Professor Wooller refused to quit as honorary chancellor
stating that most IIU students were happy and that the university was
good value for money.
Professor John Arnold of Loughborough University has seen coursework from an IIU graduate.

He said: "Students are paying for this, what I would
regard as worthless and bogus qualifications. I would say buyer beware
from the point of view of students.
"You know I really think that they'll probably be
getting qualifications which are unlikely to be taken seriously at
least in Western Europe."

[mirugam]

awwww.....pity the students....

Nowadays universities are mushrooming so fast till we lost track of which is which. The advertisements are so elobrate and convincing.Hence, the blindly believing students fall into their trap.

So, i'm determined to further my studies in reputable local universities.

[frags]

This one is a more recent report by malaysianinsider about an American degree mill.

Source: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/world/9996-

Degrees scam: Malaysians among buyers of fake degrees


HONG KONG, Oct 4 — It was the largest case of degree fraud in
America, perhaps the world. The investigation into St Regis University,
a huge degree mill, ended in jail sentences for its "founders" and some
employees in July, and has cast light on the lengths to which sellers
of dodgy degrees will go to ensnare people in their web of deceit.

St Regis' tentacles spread around the globe, with clients across Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Asia, including Hong Kong.

"This was an eight-agency federal criminal prosecution, involving
more than 100 countries, 66 real universities known to have had their
degrees counterfeited and 150 separate bogus institutions set up by the
perpetrators," said George Gollin, professor of physics at the
University of Illinois. He had been monitoring the degree mill since
2002 and passed on a great deal of information to investigators that
led to the convictions.




"It is the first case of its kind where we have so much information,
so we have an extensive profile of how they operated internationally,"
he said.

A statement from the US Department of Justice said St Regis'
customers included teachers, psychologists, engineers and at least one
college president. "Many were shipped abroad. The annual degree output
from St Regis was about the same as a medium-sized American
university," it said.

Investigators calculated that the organisers netted at least US$7.3 million (RM25 million) from the sales.

"It was the most sophisticated degree mill because they had 125
different websites of high [secondary] schools, colleges, accredited
entities, degree transcript storage and credential evaluation
companies," said Allen Ezell, a former FBI agent who has investigated
degree mills.

"We now have a better insight into how big this was and how many
sales were in the various countries and the type of degrees in demand."

According to documents unearthed by federal investigators, some 30
Hong Kong people wittingly or unwittingly acquired fake degrees,
although several Hong Kong individuals bought more than one degree in
the space of a very short period, suggesting they knew very well what
they were doing.

Although the vast majority of degrees — more than 9,000 — were sold
in the US, large numbers were sold to Britain, Canada, India and
Germany. Hong Kong was the 15th largest buyer among 130 states and
territories, just behind Malaysia, Singapore and Pakistan.

However, it was the large number of Middle Eastern buyers that first
attracted the attention of the US Department of Homeland Security
because of fears the degrees might be used to gain admission to US
higher degree programmes, or for immigration purposes.

The most popular were degrees in business administration, "because
it can be universally applied in all forms in the workplace", Ezell
said.

"But they even operated St Luke's Medical School — they put MDs out
there on the street. These were medical degrees that were not just to
hang on the wall, they were going to use them."

Of 29 degrees known to have been shipped to Hong Kong, almost a
third were business degrees, including doctorates, according to court
papers.

The degree mill operated from the late 1990s until 2005 when the
ringleaders, Steve Randock and his wife Dixie Randock, their daughter,
daughter-in-law and four others were indicted on charges that included
mail and wire fraud, money laundering and bribery of foreign officials.

All eight chose to plead guilty rather than face a jury trial. In
July, Dixie Randock, a secondary school dropout, was sentenced to three
years in prison after the three-year investigation involving thousands
of documents and seized computer records.

Most of the sales were carried out by Internet spam, court documents
said, with Dixie Randock buying up e-mail address lists. On one
occasion she included an offer to "buy one degree at full price and get
a second degree free".

Roberta Markishtum, jailed for four months, was Dixie Randock's
former daughter-in-law, who worked as a printer, providing the diplomas
complete with seals and fictitious signatures. Using the name Jennifer
Green, she also answered the phone at the operation's "official
transcript record centre", verifying the authenticity of degrees for
employers who thought they were calling an office in Washington, court
documents said.

While the Randocks have been jailed, some of their overseas associates are beyond the US courts' jurisdiction.
At one point St Regis had "deans of studies" based in Hong Kong and
Athens. One-time "dean of studies" for the "St Regis School of
Business" was "professor" Steve Ho based in Hong Kong.

Ho also cropped up as "dean of studies" for the bogus "St Regis
School of Martial Arts", among other things purporting to teach martial
arts by distance learning using "streaming video displays".

Investigators found e-mails between Ho and St Regis defendants
confirming that degrees had been sent to Hong Kong. "It is clear from
the material unearthed, that Ho was a significant party," Gollin said.

Some overseas associates have run their own businesses, which
combine degrees from real institutions with those from bogus ones,
including St Regis, further muddying the waters. Some investigators
fear that through such combinations the degree mill operators may have
infiltrated genuine bodies, including accrediting organisations.

There is also evidence that degree mills had been able to pay bribes
to government officials in order to get accreditation papers.
"St Regis is the first degree mill I have seen where they have got
inside the department of education of another government," Ezell said.

The investigation revealed that a high-level Liberian diplomat based
in Washington had solicited cash bribes in return for providing
Liberian accreditation for St Regis and other diploma mills.

Ezell said the operation was "very good at surgery". "A photo
showing one St Regis campus was actually a picture of Blenheim Palace
in England, birthplace of Winston Churchill.

"The faculty portraits showed that heads of Africans had been
grafted on to the body of white men, they were black faces with white
necks."
In July 2005, US agents staged a sting in a meeting with St Regis
officials, posing as investors looking to purchase accreditation for
universities.

The agents secretly taped Abdullah Dunbar, who was the Liberian
embassy's deputy chief of mission, demanding US$5,000 and a paid trip
to Liberia to finalise accreditation for the fictitious university. A
month later the authorities raided offices in Arizona, Idaho and
Washington state, confiscating computers and degree-printing equipment.

The main perpetrators have been brought to justice, but Gollin said
he believed unscrupulous former overseas associates of the degree mill
could well be using similar methods to continue selling bogus degrees
worldwide from non-US bases. — South China Morning Post

This report is not written by malaysian insider but a Hongke publication. WHy dont Malaysian media write or highlight these scams? ******* idiots!

[frags]

awwww.....pity the students....

Nowadays universities are mushrooming so fast till we lost track of which is which. The advertisements are so elobrate and convincing.Hence, the blindly believing students fall into their trap.

So, i'm determined to further my studies in reputable local universities.

Almost 90% of the students knew what they were paying for! Most of them use these bogus, fake degrees, masters, doctorates and even phds for prestige only. Moslty politicians and businessmen.

[mirugam]

oh ya....i agree with that category of students who opt for this kind of universities.

They have to attend a few classes in some hotels and they are eligible for Dr title. Whereby a real doctorate student has to work so hard for 2 to 5 years.

[gowri]

guess a short cut to achieve their dreams to be Dr....

[Admin]

Actually this is not something new.....have been around for a long time. That is why you need to do your "due diligence" and get the background of the university verified, especially those long distance or online programs. There are many quacks around.

[VJeyaa]

I'm with the admin on this one. This is a problem that has been around for sometime. As long as there are dishonest students wanting to buy their papers, there will be such places that offer them. Ptui!!!

The fake paper is worth less than the toilet paper that you use if you do not study for it as your head is empty. What for? My question is will you be able to respect yourself at the end of the day?

[rishi]

self-respect aside, how would u feel when friends, family and boss find out?

kantoi le..

[mirugam]

Actually when you are an established person in career or business, who bothers to check on our qualification anyway.

For position like managers and above, no one is checking your certs. You might write that you have PhD from here and there but who is checking the authenticity of it?

[Maya]

oh ya....i agree with that category of students who opt for this kind of universities.

They have to attend a few classes in some hotels and they are eligible for Dr title. Whereby a real doctorate student has to work so hard for 2 to 5 years.

8yrs.. i think.

[Bruce Lee]

Students from china who come here...some of them will not be able to cope up with the degree programmes...their level of english being so low...so at the end of the da they end up buying a degree from the college (whichever lah) & go back to china & proudly tell their parents........that they hv completed their degree....

how they get money to buy degree ????
...ok their parent send them tuition fee every semester...not knowing tht these fellas hv dropped out...

how do their continue their visa when they hv dropped out frm the college?
...they can always bribe the staff renewing the visa....when there is a giver there will be a taker....

these are nt stories tht i hv heard frm others......these are from the horse's mouth !!!!!! the students themselves told me this....

[rishi]

cretive and innovative plan

[Chello]

guess a short cut to achieve their dreams to be Dr....

you can actually get a fake degree online as a doctor...

its an american based website...

this lady...dunno from where...she practiced as an oncologist using fake

equipments to treat her patients for around 5 years....getting her one week degree

from the website...

[Kon_Roy]

guess a short cut to achieve their dreams to be Dr....

you can actually get a fake degree online as a doctor...

its an american based website...

this lady...dunno from where...she practiced as an oncologist using fake

equipments to treat her patients for around 5 years....getting her one week degree

from the website...

LOL !!!...