“The Telegraph”, United Kingdom on 22nd April 2012 : Susan Kelly, 45, was in charge of a team of other carers unsupervised by doctors at an NHS walk-in centre after telling her employers she had a degree. But after investigation it was discovered she had dropped out of her university studies and then, along with her husband Mark Darren Kelly, forged her qualifications to get the job. She was jailed for eight months in May last year after admitting fraud, while her husband Mark Darren Kelly received a suspended prison sentence.

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"Times Higher Education", United Kingdom on 05th April 2012 : Overseas students in the UK could be unwitting holders of fake University of Hertfordshire degrees after a man was jailed for forging them, according to police. Waheed Iqbal was found guilty of seven fraud-related charges after giving five overseas students false certificates when he was the principal of the London College of Computing and Management. Three victims were given bogus degrees from Hertfordshire by Iqbal, one of whom tried to use the certificate to obtain a visa from the Home Office. Hertfordshire was unaware of the scam. The government department discovered the fraud after noticing that the dean who signed the certificate had retired in 2003, explained Rhianne Trill, a Metropolitan Police officer who worked on the case. Iqbal, 58, who was born in Pakistan and was living in Isleworth, Middlesex, was sentenced to two years and six months in prison after being found guilty by a jury at Blackfriars Crown Court in January.

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"Vanguard", Nigeria on 21st February 2012 : An Ogun State Magistrate’s court 1, sitting in Isabo, Abeokuta, Monday, sentenced a 27-year-old fake medical doctor, Monday Philips, to three years imprisonment without the option of fine for forgery, fraud and stealing. The Chief Magistrate, Adebola Adenarinwo, who delivered the judgment, said evidence before the court had shown that the accused person was a fake medical doctor and guilty of the three count charge brought against him by the state prosecution……..The accused was also charged for tendering fake secondary school certificate, which was discovered after a visit to the secondary school he allegedly attended in Abeokuta.

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"RIANOVOSTI", Russia on 20th February 2012 : The Tver district court sentenced a prominent lawyer and TV presenter to two years in prison for fraud when it was uncovered that he had been practicing law with a false diploma over 12 years, the Kommersant newspaper reported on Monday. Vladimir Oreshnikov was found to have worked as a lawyer illegally, using a false diploma. The latter charge could be used as grounds for the review of a large number of criminal cases, which he was involved in, the newspaper writes. "The lack of higher education may be grounds to review cases in which he participated, as well as the provision of low-quality legal services, which is a violation of the right for defense," Kommersant quoted the chairman of the Bar Association, Vladimir Zherebenkov, under whose guidance Oreshnikov had worked for many years.

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"Mail Online", United Kingdom on 02nd February 2012 : A bogus biology teacher forged her qualifications to work as an examiner for an A-level exam board. Julia Rawlinson, 44, duped her bosses by using a computer to forge a degree, doctorate and teaching certificates. She then got a job at examination board Edexcel – marking thousands of A-level papers for students across Britain – before becoming a teacher at Westlands School in Torquay, Devon.

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"Daily Times", Pakistan on 09th January 2012: One of the country’s most prestigious educational institutions, University of Engineering and Technology (UET), has a bogus intermediate degree holder as IT Consultant at Khwarzmi Institute of Computer Science (KICS) since 2009, Daily Times learnt on Sunday. According to documents available with Daily Times, Muhammad Iftikhar’s admission was also cancelled by the Punjab University’s College of Information Technology (PUCIT) in 2009 for having a bogus intermediate degree.

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"mobile.monitor.co.ug", Uganda on 25th October 2011 : The Jinja District Lands Officer, Aisha Nahabbo, will spend the next nine months in Luzira Prison after the Anti-Corruption Court found her guilty of forging her academic documents to obtain a job. The court sitting in Kampala found Nahabbo guilty of forging a second class upper Law degree from Makerere University to obtain the job in 2007. Court presided over by magistrate Sarah Langa heard that the land officer had obtained a pass degree in law from Makerere University in 1999 which she did not disclose before the Jinja District Service Commission when she applied for the job and instead presented the forged degree. The magistrate consequently convicted Nahabbo on a count of uttering false documents and sentenced her to nine months in jail.

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"news.err.ee", Estonia on 17th October 2011 : The Parnu County Court has found a 47-year-old man guilty of presenting a fake university diploma when applying for the director position at a Parnu nursing home last year. Heinar Ipsberg was given a three year suspended sentence of two months conditional imprisonment. In addition, he has to cover the 530-euro cost of the legal proceedings, court spokeswoman Elo Kirsipuu said.

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"coventryobserver.co.uk", United Kingdom on 14th October 2011 : A Former teacher at Ash Green School has been banned from the classroom for at least four years after producing a fake Open University degree in a bid to get a permanent job. Deborah Allen got a temporary job at the school on Ash Green Lane in August 2009 as an unqualified science teacher. But a disciplinary hearing held by the General Teaching Council on Tuesday heard in June of the following year after she had applied for a permanent position whereby concerns were raised about her knowledge of the subject and her standard of literary. After a meeting with the deputy head teacher and respresentatives of an organisation with whom she was undertaking the Residential Teacher Programme in order to attain her teacher qualifications. The Bachelor of Science certificate she provided claiming to be from Open University was checked out and found to have been forged.

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"heraldsun.com.au", Australia on 29th September 2011 : A serbian man who worked for former president Slobodan Milosevic's secret police has been jailed in Victoria for defrauding WorkSafe and the Transport Accident Commission (TAC). Dusan Milosevic, 48, was found guilty of providing false university qualifications to work as a psychologist in Australia. County Court Judge Liz Gaynor said Milosevic provided the false documents purporting to be from the University of Belgrade to register as a psychologist in NSW and Victoria.

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"allafrica.com", Mauritius on 28nd September 2011 : A Kenyan lecturer at Umutara Polytechnic University, was yesterday found guilty of using forged academic transcripts and sentenced to eight months in prison by the Nyagatare Intermediary Court. Peter Mawae who taught communication skills at the university since 2008, claimed to hold a Masters Degree in French from Kenyatta University in Kenya. He was arrested last week. Prosecutors told court that their investigations proved that Mawae never studied at Kenyatta University.The presiding judge, Sam Rupia, said that Mawae applied for a job, got it, worked and earned a salary using forged transcripts.

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"ceskapozice.cz", Czech Republic on 09th September 2011 : Among the first people to be stripped of a law degree from the faculty of the University of West Bohemia (ZCU) in Plzen – labelled a “diploma mill” in the media for having awarded fast-track degrees under suspicious circumstances – has filed a law suit to have his degree reinstated……Following the revelation in 2009 that the law faculty of the University of West Bohemia in Plzen had been awarding fast-track degrees – to those who had plagiarized or not even submitted dissertations – then Education Minister Miroslava Kopicova ordered an audit of all Czech universities to see if such practices were widespread.

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