The man said he was a retired military officer from Syria, which the American government deems a sponsor of terrorists. He wanted credentials as a chemical engineer, useful for getting a visa to work in the United States. Could James Monroe University help?

For $1,277, it did. Within days, he received three undergraduate and advanced degrees in chemistry and environmental engineering, based on his "life experience," according to documents in federal court.
Although the degrees looked authentic, Monroe had no faculty or courses; the "adviser" evaluating "life experience" was a high school dropout.

Monroe was one of more than 120 fictitious universities operated by Dixie and Steven Randock, a couple from Colbert, Washington, who sold diplomas for a price, according to a three-year federal investigation that ended in guilty pleas from the Randocks to mail and wire fraud. The inquiry into their diploma mill, which operated most often as St. Regis University, provides the most up-to-date portrait of how diploma factories can harness the power of the Internet to expand their reach.

The Randocks, with six former employees who also pleaded guilty to federal charges, will be sentenced Wednesday. Through their lawyers, the Randocks declined to comment; but the court documents describe an operation that grew from a trickle to a flood from 1999 to 2005, when the authorities shut it down after its transaction with the Syrian officer, who was actually a Secret Service agent. With each year, the company became more inventive and bold, with revenues growing from $5,000 in 1999 to $1.65 million in 2005, and churning out more than 10,000 diplomas for customers in 131 countries.

The Randocks took in more than $7 million, said Thomas Rice, a spokesman for the chief federal prosecutor in Spokane. They created 121 fictitious universities and produced counterfeit degrees claiming to be from scores of real universities, the court papers say.

"If they got their money, you got your diploma," Rice said.

It is difficult to pin down how many diploma mills exist, or how many bogus degrees are bought each year, said George Gollin, a board member of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, the federal government's recognized authority on accrediting agencies. But Gollin, who assisted investigators in the case, estimated such companies sold 100,000 to 200,000 phony degrees a year.

Officials say they are concerned not only by growth in the industry but also about the potential for terrorists to use bogus degrees to obtain U.S. visas.

Law enforcement officials say there are many obstacles to prosecution. Federal law is murky, lacking even a working definition of a diploma mill; and, in 2006, Congress eliminated a requirement that online colleges and universities provide at least half their courses in actual classrooms, making it more difficult to detect bogus operations.

About 20 states have passed laws to crack down on the trade in bogus diplomas, but companies simply relocate to other states. Some, like Oregon, have tried more comprehensive approaches, making it a crime to use degrees from diploma mills named on a state Web site.

A 2004 report by the Government Accountability Office, which surveyed only 2 percent of federal employees, found 463 who had bought degrees from three diploma mills, but the study warned that the true number was probably much higher. More than half worked for the Defense Department.

The investigation into St. Regis, prompted by articles in The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Washington, offers an intriguing X-ray of diploma mills in the modern age. Thanks to the Internet, they can market themselves internationally at little cost and operate without revealing an address or spending heavily on advertising.

Technology is also easing the way for fraud. Cutting and pasting with abandon, St. Regis created virtual facades to make institutions appear authentic, the court papers said.

Alongside the phony entities, the Randocks began to offer counterfeit degrees from legitimate universities, the court documents said. The couple offered false transcripts and letters of recommendation, and special telephone lines to verify the credentials to employers.

They created a Registrar of Official Academic Records to certify phony transcripts and an Official Transcript Archive Center, in reality a post office box. Moving into what experts describe as the next frontier, the Randocks created accreditation mills to give a veneer of legitimacy to the bogus operations.

According to court documents, the Randocks went so far as to bribe Liberian government officials to obtain accreditation for their phony institutions. Liberian officials were implicated in the scheme, including Abdullah Dunbar, deputy chief of the Liberian Embassy in Washington, who was filmed accepting money at the Mayflower Hotel.

The Randocks created Web sites meant to appear as if they were the official Web site of the Liberian Embassy. There, visitors were told that St. Regis and the Randocks' other holdings were authentic, accredited institutions, recognized in Liberia. At the time of their arrest, the Randocks had taken steps to open a St. Regis office in Liberia. Had they succeeded, their phony universities would have been beyond the reach of American authorities, Gollin said.

"What was so impressive about their operation was how sophisticated it was," he added.

Fake-diploma industry is linked to terror threat
Article from: International Herald Tribune Article date: July 1, 2008 Author: Diana Jean Schemo The New York Times Media Group More results for: RANDOCKS

International Herald Tribune

07-01-2008

Fake-diploma industry is linked to terror threat
Byline: Diana Jean Schemo The New York Times Media Group
Edition: 1
Section: NEWS