Russian Criminal Group Forges College Diplomas

Russian police have arrested a criminal group responsible for the trafficking of counterfeit college diplomas, including those from Harvard, according to a statement released by the state-run news outlet Russian Information Agency Novosti.

The criminals—whose activities were uncovered by officials in the Russian Interior Ministry’s Economic Security Department in July—have been charged with issuing spurious Harvard diplomas for $40,000 each, according to the news release.

The figure is a significant discount from the near-$200,000 price tag of a four-year undergraduate education at Harvard. University spokesman Kevin Galvin declined to comment on the situation.

“I think it’s a compliment in a way,” said Ruo S. Chen ’12. “It makes me feel good that people are willing to pay that much money to get a diploma from the school that I go to.”

But Harvard was not the only elite institution to fall victim to the forgery. According to the RIA release, fake diplomas for the Plekhanov Russian Academy of Economics—a prestigious Moscow-based public research university—have also been discovered, selling at a rate of 300,000 rubles, or $10,000.

The criminals used bank cards to conduct international transactions, according to the RIA report.

Far from being a problem exclusive to Russia, diploma forgery is a crime of international scope—thousands of fake documents are annually discovered in countries like Britain, the United States, and Ukraine, according to Alexei Shyshko, deputy head of the Department.

“A large group of fraudsters are involved in the business, and much time is required to discover them,” said Alexander Khazin, deputy chief of the investigative department in the Interior Ministry, in the report.

Given the extent of the criminal operation, Shyshko said diploma forgery had implications that “society in general”—and not simply the police—had to combat. For examples, employers will have to verify the authenticity of their employees’ diplomas, he noted.

Specific qualities would hamper easy reproduction of Harvard diplomas for forgers, according to Marilyn Danz, associate registrar of records and requirements in the Registrar’s Office.

“You could spot a fake a mile away,” she said in a 2002 interview with The Crimson about diploma forgery. Danz could not be reached for comment Saturday.

The requirement of the signatures of five school officials and the raise embossed seal on Harvard diplomas make them particularly tricky to replicate, she said at the time.

But as indicated by the news of the fraud—which was publicly announced by the Interior Ministry of Russia’s Economic Security Department on Thursday—the Russian criminals seem to have found a loophole.

“It is annoying to some extent because people are getting [diplomas] without going through the Harvard experience,” said Ross P. Ford ’12. “But, at the same time, it’s kind of shocking and funny because it’s not what you would immediately expect from a Russian gang.”