Sunday 30 June 2013

How You Can Spot Fake Diplomas

By Jeanette Riggs


For a lot of reasons, such as improving career prospects or winning their friends' respect, a lot of people acquire fake diplomas. They present these as an honour which the possessor of such a document did not earn and has no grounds for claiming. However, you can detect this fraud, and the ways to do this are outlined in the paragraphs below.

To begin with, know that a lot of them are simple to detect. There might be typos on the actual certificate, or a basic format that anybody could put together with Microsoft Frontpage. Not all certificates are as simple to detect as this, though.

There are plenty of fake diplomas mills in operation that specialise in churning out professional looking certificates. Unlike actual colleges and universities which demand several years of study for the right to a qualification, the mills have a different criteria. All they require is payment, and they will issue you with the desired document.

These authentic seeming cons can be detected as well, though a little more work is needed to do so. You should first start by looking at what organisation is meant to have awarded this document. Such an organisation may not exist, in which case the con is exposed from the get go.

If the institution does exist, that does not mean the credential is legitimate. This place should have national or regional accreditation from an agency which has approval from the department of education. Worthwhile credentials are not issued from unaccredited institutions.

The accreditation must be provided by an agency that has been recognised by the education department. If it is not, then there is every chance that the agency itself is a fraud. And if that is the case, then you should not be suckered into believing that either the institution or the agency can be trusted.

If it is found that an organisation that a person claims as an alma mater is authentic, but that person's claim seems inauthentic, there are a couple of ways to test their authenticity. First of these is to get in touch with that organisation. Second is to probe the person in question on the matter.

The organisation will have a database on all of their students, past and present. So a simple phone call will be able to determine if someone has studied there before. This should be sufficient to clarify a person's claims to this 'alma mater'.

But a few well asked questions should also be enough to verify these claims. Ask them what they studied, what topics were covered on these courses, how they have been applicable in their subsequent career, and similar queries of this kind. These should be enough to determine if a person is being truthful or if they are lying.

To summarise, detecting fake diplomas relies on how good the certificate presented is. In any case, regardless of the effort that has been put into such a fraud, it can be exposed with a little effort. And the tips in the paragraphs above can be of use in this regard.




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