Fake diplomas dupe experts

An outfit that sells certificates online recently claimed to be able to manufacture college diplomas that look authentic enough to pass the test on the China Higher-education Student Information (CHSI) website. The site is administered by the Ministry of Education to verify college admissions, student records, qualification certificates, and employment information.

In order to test this claim, a reporter from the Beijing News asked the vendor, who wished to be called Liu Yi, to forge a diploma, which was indeed good enough to fool the website.

Shady dealings

Liu, who has run the business for two years, said he can manufacture authentic-looking diplomas from various universities, selling them for 2,000 yuan ($321) each. In December alone, he said, about 20 clients put in an order for one of these counterfeit diplomas, the Beijing News reported Monday.　

"Our method is to find a graduate's name that matches that of our client. Then we make a clone of his diploma," Liu told the Beijing News.

Clients whose names are simpler and shorter have more choices in whose diplomas to copy because the vendor can find more people with the very same name, he said.
According to Liu, the procedure involves finding candidates who have the same name as the client, and then acquiring their diploma numbers in order to forge all certificates and files for the client.

"However, only people born between 1967 and 1977 can buy these cloned diplomas," Liu said, refusing to give any further explanation without being paid.

The reporter, who used the pseudonym Xu Feng and claimed to have been born in 1971, asked Liu to clone a diploma for him in early December.　

On December 4, Liu sent the reporter the information of six graduates named Xu Feng from several universities including Central University of Finance and Economics and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.

The diplomas were issued between 1999 and 2008, and information on the graduates' certificates, photos and majors was provided, but not their diploma numbers. Liu explained that the diploma numbers are the key information that his outfit sells and that they have special channels for acquiring them, but he refused to give any further details.