By Allen Ezell, Special Agent (retired), Federal Bureau of Investigation
This article will cover specific types of fraud. I’ll discuss Research Service Provider Students, aka Proxy Students, and give you an in-depth look at the RSP fraud and its related blackmail and extortion of the student buyer.
I’ll also provide information about diploma mills appearing on the internet. I have reviewed hundreds of websites for diploma mills, fake accreditors, and related items since my last College & University article in 2023 (see C&U Journal Publications listed below) and will give you my observations and tips for awareness.
Research Service Provider Aka Proxy Students
Many college students in the United States use the research services of Axact and similar entities in Pakistan to do their academic work for them, including research papers, and the services transmit them electronically to their instructors. At Axact’s peak, they had 50 front-end call center operators supported by 300 back-end support employees; revenue in the early 2000s was about $200,000 per day during exam seasons. Their revenue from Proxy Students exceeded their income from the Education Department through the sale of fake academic credentials.
Normally, both parties (buyer and seller) agree on the cost of their services up front. However, later, after the student receives the needed services from Axact, the young buyer is ripe for blackmail and extortion. These fraudsters make more money on the upsell (“huge scores,” as they are called)—the blackmail and extortion after the services have been performed for the student. These “contract cheating” frauds pose risks to both academic integrity and students’ personal safety.
Just imagine a young student you know, away from home probably for the first time, falling into this trap. Just imagine how they would handle constant threats of notification to school officials, friends and parents, honor court, expulsion from school, law enforcement, loss of financial aid and scholarships, publicity (local and school newspaper and website), immigration authorities, etc. I have a source knowledgeable in this arena who estimates that the fake RSPs in Karachi gross about $10,000,000 per month through these fraud schemes. The typical progression by the student is as follows:
Student finds an advertisement regarding cheating services offered by an RSP.
Student signs up for a relatively low fee for the service.
The service is about 80% reliable, and the student receives the service they need. Occasionally, they do poor work or the student fails the course; however, the service refuses any refunds.
The vulnerable student now becomes the target of the upsell, blackmail, and extortion.
For online proctored courses, RSP’s also offer to hack the school system, connect to the student’s computer undetected by the remote proctoring service, and take the exam for the student. (I do not know how much the real proctoring services police themselves. I have heard some are located in emerging countries where one operator can monitor ten test takers at once.) The student only needs to sit at the computer and pretend to be taking the exam. The RSP Upsell Teams record everything and later use these recordings as blackmail material. After the service is provided, the upsell blackmail can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars.
Examples:
A young pregnant international student living in the United States is attending a U.S. college. Her husband does not know she has used the services of an RSP at school. My source has spoken to her and says the fraudsters “had absolutely no mercy on her,” exploiting all the above to get $30,000 from her, all based on threats, extortion, and blackmail. The source told her to contact her banks to dispute certain charges, and she was able to recoup about 30% of what she lost.
A female international college student attending college in the U.S. used the RSP “contract cheating service,” which likely granted the service remote access to her computer. This allowed them to glean additional material from her computer to use as leverage in their extortion scheme against her. In this manner, they were able to extort $21,000 from her while she earned $32,000 per year.
A male student needed to complete an online algebra course. He found a website advertising on Google that clearly stated they would act as his proxy, log in, and complete his work for him, which they did. He was happy with their results.
In many of these types of cases, the student (the buyer), just like all those buying fake college degrees, is totally vulnerable to extortion at any time. Generally, at this point, the fraudster decides to squeeze the student for more money using several upsell ruses.
Fake Copyright Release: The student is told the RSP owns the copyright to the material they created for the student, thus a “copyright release” is needed. The normal cost is $800+, “but they will try to get this amount reduced in your case.” If refused, the caller threatens exposure, supported by fake emails to the school administration, the newspaper, the police, immigration, relatives (whatever works) to get the student to comply.
“Rogue Employee:" (I have not seen this one before.) The student is told that the employee who did all his research, etc., had turned rogue and demands a higher payment for the job done, and threatens to tell the school administration about all their academic work/misconduct. Again, the upsell agent says they will act as an intermediary to reduce the amount.
Fake Government Fees: The fraudster creates a fictional, convoluted government fee, either from the U.S. Department of Education or any agency that would work, and claims the student has to pay for it. They support these statements with spurious documents from the purported department or agency, bearing seals and emblems.
Fake IP Address Deletion Service: After the student finishes using their services, the fraudster notifies the student that they immediately need this service (for an additional fee) to block the school from tracing their prior computer usage from one location to another; if they visited their home and used their computer. Yet their class submission through this service had originated in Pakistan. This IP Deletion service will prevent the school from determining that the student used different IP addresses. Whereas in reality, schools do not use this technique unless a student is suspected of cheating the system. Of course, none of this was mentioned at the beginning of the student’s relationship with the fraudsters.
Fear is the basic tactic in upselling and is used by these predators across all these fraud schemes. Once fear is created, the fraudster has the upper hand across the board.
Indicators of An Axact Fake School
- Domain Extensions: Since Axact fake sites rarely had “.edu” extensions, I began scanning the web addresses for the fakes they hide among legitimate schools. There have been occasions when Axact fraudsters purchased existing schools that had “.edu” extensions. Of course, Axact exploited this and ran at least four different fakes over time, all with the initials “pcu” from this “pcu.edu” address in California. Yes, the “.edu” extension was used to lure thousands of victims. At least three fraudulent Axact schools operated from this “.edu” extension for at least 10 years. All school officials should be aware of instances where the web address includes “.edu” as part of the domain name, not as a domain extension, to give the appearance of “.edu” inclusion and legitimacy. In the last two years, I have examined about 200 fake school and accreditor websites. Below are some of the domain extensions I encountered:
.com
.edu.pk
.edu.us
.edu.ye (Yemen)
.education
.gov.org
.net
.org
.me (Middle East)
.pk
.us
.university
- Loose Affiliations: I observed several fake school/accreditor sites that spent considerable space touting an upcoming legitimate Council for Higher Education Accreditation Annual Conference and encouraging readers to register and attend. By this means, this entity was trying to increase its legitimacy by associating itself with an entity which readers would immediately recognize as legitimate ("rubbing elbows" so to speak)—a common tactic.
- Lack of Campus Images and Faculty: In recent months, I have observed that Axact fake school sites no longer show purported campus pictures, faculty pictures, or their names. Stock generic photos appear inside and outside the school, with no specific names appearing on anything. Fewer graphics appear on the school sites, yet the accreditor sites are flush with beautiful graphics. In the days of old, Axact had a quality control department that examined all websites prior to their being released to the public. Errors did exist, but were few and far between. Now it’s open season on school site errors. All count as Red Flags.
Protect Your Communities from Diploma Mills
We can only eliminate Diploma Mills through consumer (buyer) education, decreasing the value of the product they are selling by increasing public awareness of the staggering number of fake academic credentials on the market today. This runs the gamut from a diploma mill that claims to have a men’s basketball team to the diploma mills and accreditors that fail to furnish an address, state, country, or telephone number for their school or entity, all usual traits for fake accreditors.
Get law enforcement involved. Encourage employers and all higher education officials to spend a little more time examining the credentials they encounter daily. Then, when spurious documents are presented to your institution and detected, file a police report, and even encourage publicity that your institution will accept no fake academic documents, and that you closely examine everything. Only then can we cut into the diploma and transcript sales by the Axacts of the world. Beware of fraudsters using fake law firms for pressure tactics.
C&U Journal Publications
"Diploma Mills and Counterfeit Operations," Summer 2019, 94-3
"Academic Fraud and the World's Largest Diploma Mill," Fall 2019, 94-4
"How to Identify Diploma Mills and Axact Web Sites, and Tools for Your Protection," Winter 2020, 95-1
"Axact, the World’s Largest Diploma Mill: A Glimpse Behind the Veil of Legitimacy," Summer 2023, 98-3
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