Police in Saudi Arabia have arrested an expatriate forger who allegedly made SAR13m (US$3.5m) selling fake degrees to students, it was reported.
The suspect, who is believed to have sold more than 700 phony post-graduate university degrees and diplomas, was picked up by Jazan police officials who foiled the Jeddah-based forger’s attempts to flee the country using a false identity.
Local press reports suggested consulate officials of an Arab country were helping the accused man leave Jeddah, and sources say that among evidence gathered against him is a letter from a university in his country of origin accusing him of undertaking illegal activities in violation of an agreement with the university.
The letter is said to accuse the man of registering students for post-graduate programmes in the name of that university, a practice which he was not authorised to do according to the contract between them. It also demanded that he return all the fees collected from students for these post-graduate studies.
The same source, according to Al-Madinah newspaper, revealed that police had been monitoring the activities of the man in question – believed to be Arabic – after growing suspicions from the Ministry of Higher Education. The ministry had received complaints that the suspect was taking large fees for courses in Arab universities, with the help of an Arab consulate.
In a separate incident, Qassim police last week arrested an Arab university professor and his daughter for forging university diplomas, and seized the laboratory where they faked more than 16,000 certificates of local and international universities.
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