My hotmail acct was spammed. Email inside (Phd in a matter of days)

UNIVERSITY DIPLOMAS

Obtain a prosperous future, money earning power, and the admiration of all.

Diplomas from prestigious non-accredited
universities based on your present knowledge
and life experience.

No required tests, classes, books, or interviews.

Bachelors, masters, MBA, and doctorate (PhD)
diplomas available in the field of your choice.

No one is turned down.

Confidentiality assured.

CALL NOW to receive your diploma
within days!!!

X - XXX- XXX- XXXX
or
X - XXX- XXX- XXXX

Call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including
Sundays and holidays.




[Note: This message has been edited by Bruce]

 

... or possibly apply directly through a.e.d

Peter French




[Note: This message has been edited by Bruce]

 

Sorry, I forgot to add my comments to my post. I don't endorse this, I just thought it was funny I received this e-mail after I did a lot of research on accreditation and DL. I may have been tempted to call and check into it further if I haven’t done some research and checked out this forum for the past couple of weeks. I just wonder how many people who are not enlightened on this subject would call?

JSD

 

Unfortunately I suspect a great many people fall victim to this fraud (or ones like it). Why? Because they don't know any better. I'm sure we all forget around here that only .12% of people actually know that these things exist.


Tom Nixon

 

John Bear had done a bit of investigation on this one (I think it's referred to internally as the "Prestigious Unaccredited Degrees group", because the school has changed names about a half dozen times).

If I remember the numbers right, they were able to trace something like a million or million and a half dollars per month (at somewhere between $2500 and $4000 per degree) going to these crooks.

The funds (at last check) were wired to an account in Cyprus, the mail goes through a secretarial service in the UK, and the calls are returned from somewhere in, I think, Ohio.

The many different phone numbers that appear on the spams are just voicemail drop boxes spread around the country.

When the guy calls back, he tells you point blank that the school is a diploma mill. And within the last week or so, there was a thread here with the URL for the school (intended for prospective employers to check the validity of the school). Right on the first page of the site, it essentially says "We could be lying our asses off about everything we say in here, so don't hold us liable if none of it is true"

The people are slick... and there were quite a few resumes on the Monster database that listed the various incarnations of this fraudulent entity (Harrington, Palmers Green, don't remember the others).

The unfortunate thing is that I think that just about everyone buying degrees from these folks *knows* that it's a fraud. At least Capitol creates the illusion that people can buy into if they choose that it's a legitimate degree (which, of course, it's not) But with these folks, it's a fraud, they tell you it's a fraud, and you buy it knowing that.

Nice, huh?

 

I looked into this a while back with online searches. They use the same Houston telephone number (but with a different extension) as an offer of an "International Driver's License," which the offer promises will allow you to keep on driving even if your U.S. driver's license has been taking away from you. It seems too hard to believe that these scams aren't connected.

A page about the university scheme appears at:
http://www.flimflam.com/diploma.htm

I don't think this tells you anything you don't know, but I think flimflam is probably a site that will be very interesting to people who peruse this site.

 

OK, the license thing is the same number as one of the degree scheme's New Hampshire numbers. Anyway, same difference.

Here is a page from the Las Vegas Weekly about this:
http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/departments/2001_02_01/upfront1.html