Thousands of buyers may have participated in fake diploma scam

The Chicago Tribune reports:

The network of bogus universities was a family-run venture based in rural Washington state, but the criminal enterprise spanned the globe, with its operators allegedly paying bribes to Liberian officials and selling fake PhDs and MDs as far away as Iran.

They were busted by state and federal officials—among them a Secret Service investigator posing as a shadowy Syrian seeking a bogus chemistry degree—with the help of a local physics professor.

For the last four years, U. of I. at Urbana-Champaign professor and Fermilab physicist George Gollin helped unravel the scheme that has resulted in eight guilty pleas this year and could spark further charges against hundreds of people who may have bought and used bogus diplomas.

Dubbed Operation Gold Seal by federal investigators, the case exploded into the national news last week with the publication of the names of some 9,600 possible buyers of junk degrees from the phony "St. Regis University" and at least 120 affiliated institutions operated by Dixie and Steven Randock Sr.