3 held over fake degrees

Three suspects, believed to be involved in a scheme of falsifying academic certificates, were detained by police yesterday.

The trio, all of whom are Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) students, had been apprehended to facilitate investigations.

diploma fraud

The trio — two women and a man — all in their 20’s, were nabbed during a raid on Saturday night in a house located at a secluded area in Kampar, Perak, following tip-offs.

A police spokesperson said the special operations task force, which conducted the raid also seized computers and other paraphernalia believed to have been used in producing the false documents.

He said the three suspects and the seized items, were brought to Penang to assist in further investigations. They were later remanded.

It was learnt that initial investigations revealed the false academic documents were intended for diploma and degree qualifications.

USM vice-chancellor Prof Datuk Dr Omar Osman, when contacted, said the university had initially found an advertisement through an online portal, which offered false tertiary qualification documents to the public.

“We then reported the matter to the police. We are also carrying out internal investigations as to the real identities of the detainees who are believed to be USM undergraduates.”

Omar said USM would be lending its full cooperation to the police.

“USM academic papers have high security features. In fact, we had improved on the features recently. The public should report to us if they come across any individual offering such documents for sale.”

Source : asiaone