The Shady Business of the Diploma Mill

Posted on June 30, 2008
Filed Under News, The Daily Prereq | By Mike Dang

Get your MBA in one week! Become Ph.D. in only a month–all for one easy payment of $1,277! If this sounds like a scam, well…it totally is. It’s called the “Diploma Mill” and according to The New York Times, Dixie and Steven K. Randock Sr. recently plead guilty to charges of wire and mail fraud for selling thousands of counterfeit degrees to undeserving buyers worldwide. From 1999 to 2005, the couple created 121 fake universities with names like James Monroe University, raking in $7 million with their worthless diplomas. The Randocks’ mill was shut down after they tried to sell diplomas to an undercover Secret Service agent posing as a Syrian officer claiming he needed chemical engineering credentials to get a U.S. work visa. Scary stuff. Even scarier? A 2004 report by the Government Accountability Office found that, after surveying only 2 percent of federal employees, 463 had fake diploma-mill degrees. More than half of those employees worked for the Department of Defense.

According to court documents, the Randocks even bribed Liberian government officials to gain accreditation for their fake schools. A deputy chief of the Liberian embassy in Washington was caught on camera agreeing to accept money at the Mayflower Hotel. Several other Liberian officials have also been implicated in the scheme. In April, Virginia passed a bill that would punish “anyone who issues, manufactures, or knowingly uses fraudulent academic credentials” with “a sentence of up to 12 months in jail and fines of up to $2,500.”

Though the Randocks are now out of business, other mills are still operating, and the industry doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Currently, only 20 states have passed laws to crack down on diploma mills, and Congress is slow to figure out find a way to deal with them. Let’s just hope they come up with something fast, because we hardworking college grads put our blood, sweat and tears into getting our degrees. We’d hate to have to compete with some bum’s phony Ph.D.

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One Response to “The Shady Business of the Diploma Mill”

  1. Bogus Diploma Buyers Unveiled! : theprereq.com on August 1st, 2008 2:16 pm

    […] who’s ever bought a fake degree from a diploma mill must be quaking in their ill-gotten jobs right now. According to Inside Higher Ed, earlier this […]

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