online medical degrees from Rochville

Dennis Ruhl has a post about online medical degrees at Degreeinformation DL. It's fairly alarming stuff.

Here's a little more information: a list of (sequential) IP addresses and URLs.

216.150.12.176 www.instant-degrees.net
216.150.12.177 www.Online-business-degrees.net
216.150.12.178 www.Online-college-degrees-for-life-experience.com
216.150.12.179 www.Online-engineering-degrees.com
216.150.12.180 www.Online-law-degrees.com
216.150.12.181 www.Online-mba-degrees.com
216.150.12.182 www.Online-medical-degrees.com
216.150.12.183 www.Online-nursing-degrees.net
216.150.12.184 www.Originaldegrees.com
216.150.12.185 www.Phony-diplomas.com

The domain registration for online-medical-degrees.com is typical: most are registered to this address. It is

Registrant
online-medical-degrees.com
104, East 25th Street
Sarasota, Flordia 34243
US
(630) 562-0134
Created on: 17-MAR-04
Expires on: 18-MAR-05
Last Updated on: 19-MAR-04

That phone number is in the western Chicago suburbs, not Florida.

The degrees are "awarded" by Rochville.

It would be interesting to know what's really at that Florida address.

G

 

The Gulf of Mexico. The street does not go that low. If it did it would begin under water.

 

Rochville degrees pervasive

I have tried to google Rochville to see if anyone has claimed to use their degree to try and practice medicine. So far I have not found anyone. It is doubtful they could get far through legitimate routes since they would still have to produce USMLE scores and pass muster with a state medical licensing board somewhere. The boards are not perfect but they do know how to look up schools in the WHO and ECFMG databases at least. Rochville is of course not there and could not be since it not LCME accredited (it claims to be US located). What I have seen from Rochville are nursing degrees on a otherwise Arabic language website and a school administrator for one http://www.cookman.edu/publicrelations/news/2004/july/071504.html

and police officers, an IT guy for McKesson corporation on a job board and others claiming degrees from Rochville. If anyone tried to use the Rochville degree in it would likely be either as a non licensed medical assistant (some doctors use non licensed doctors as medical extenders in their offices while that doctor works on their licensure) or as a straight up scam-put out a shingle locally (happened in Dallas Fort Worth-guy had a gyn office in his house), or be an "alternative" practitioner claiming a medical degree, or have some other medical license and tout the degree as some added qualification(oral surgeon, nurse practitioner, PA etc) or online (sell a therapy using the purported expertise of the medical training). Let us know if you find a Rochville medical doctor somewhere.