London, UK -- (SBWIRE) -- 07/24/2018 -- People with fake diplomas are working as safety engineers at nuclear power plants, biological weapons experts, dentists or in medicine, engineering, business management, science and law. There are no jobs fake diploma mills don't cover.
There are some alarming statistics out there. A former FBI agent, Allen Ezell, estimates half of new PhDs issued every year in the U.S. are fake.
According to Dr George Brown, Academic director of the Think: Education Group, about 30% of professional certificates are falsified worldwide.
Authorities are trying to crackdown on fake diploma. In 2012, 9 suspects were tried in Beijing for selling fake certificates from US universities, earning profits of about 3, 4 million yuan ($ 540,000). In 2016 the executive of a Pakistani company was charged in a U.S. federal court for his part in an alleged $140 million "fake-diploma mill" scheme, investigators identified as many as 190 institutions offering bogus degrees in 2015 alone.
Despite the crackdown, today you could get a fake diploma online with $200 - $300. All you have to do is a simple online search for "fake diploma".
You can also choose were you want your diploma to be from, choose the type of degree, the date and you are ready to get hired.
"Find high quality replica diplomas from local high schools and colleges! Designed from real degrees with layouts that capture structure and font types perfectly! Featuring gold seals, "puffy" ink and more! Free shipping and rush services available!" is how a fake diploma ad sounds.
However, according to these websites they are perfectly legal as they issue the diplomas for "Novelty reasons", they don't use copy written seals or emblems owned by actual schools (even though their design may look similar.) They never forge the original administrator's name. They use a selection of in-house names that look like real signatures.
London Marketing Academy is among the first schools in the world to link their digital marketing courses diplomas to the Ethereum blockchain, making them impossible to forge.
Alexandru Simion, Account Manager, explains the 3 easy steps required to check a blockchain diploma authenticity:
1. Copy the student's certificate hash from the issued diploma.
2. Scan the Ethereum blockchain for the copied diploma hash using third party websites like https://ethplorer.io/
3. Compare the student name and the issuing address to our London Marketing Academy Ethereum address, displayed on the https://londonmarketingacademy.com/ website.
Using this technology, graduates can now prove the authenticity of their certificates and have a way to share it across their network and recruiters can verify diploma they've received with few clicks.
Documents stored in blockchain can't be forged, changed or removed, and are accessible by anyone.
It will take some time before all schools and institutions can effectively adopt the blockchain secured diploma system but it is the only real solution to the massive diploma mill industry.
About London Marketing Academy
London Marketing Academy offers digital marketing courses, held by certified trainers specialising in online marketing techniques. These take the form of individual workshops, an intensive programme, or a one-year diploma course.