Diploma firms investigated
By Mike Sims
Of the Emerald
Firms that create and sell
reproductions of college and
university diplomas may win
the approval of frustrated
students but they disturb
University Registrar Herb
Chereck.
“I’m concerned, and we’re
concerned as an institution, that
someone else is preparing a
document that only we should
prepare or reproduce,” Chereck
says.
Dick Hill, vice president for
academic affairs, has a stronger
opinion of the practice. “It
defaces the currency of the in
'<*- ■ -m
Dick Hill
stitution,” he says. “We’d have
to object strenuously to it.”
Chereck is encouraged,
however, by an apparent
crackdown on such firms. The
FBI has been conducting an in
vestigation, known as
“Dipscam,” into so-called
“diploma mills.” Part of the in
vestigation, conducted through
the bureau’s Charlotte, N.C. of
fice, has involved seizure of
records belonging to a Grants
Pass firm.
According to a brochure
advertising Alumni Arts’
“Diploma Reproduction Ser
vice,’’ the company offers
diploma copies “of the highest
quality. . . proudly compared
with the originals for beauty,
color, paper and exactness of
type and seals.”
The FBI conducted the Alum
ni Arts investigation with the
aid of Josephine County
sheriff’s deputies and in
vestigators. Special agent Allen
Ezell, who served the warrant
authorizing officials to search
and take company records and
other material, said he could
not disclose what materials
were confiscated.
Chereck says that there are
several circumstances under
which a person might want a
duplicate diploma. Alumni
Arts’ brochure states that
duplicates are offered to per
sons whose diplomas have been
lost or damaged, or to those
who want multiple copies
because they have more than
one office.
Also, Chereck says that many
people who have changed their
names request new diplomas
reflecting that change. The
University will supply a new
diploma with the new name if
the conferee presents a copy of
the court decree ordering the
change, Chereck says.
If the person does not have
such documentation, the new
name will be printed in the ap
propriate place on the diploma,
but the notation “Originally
issued under the name of. . . ”
will be printed in the lower
right corner, Chereck says.
“One of the more important
things you have to be concerned
with is taking safeguards to en
sure that a person asking for a
diploma for so-and-so is, in fact,
that person,” Chereck says.
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But Alumni Arts makes no
such verification when process
ing orders, according to its
brochure, because many institu
tions will not verify an in
dividual’s status.
This also bothers Chereck.
‘‘When our office issues
duplicates, we can control who
gets them by confirming that
that degree was earned by that
person,” he says.
‘‘Then these reproduction
firms come in and say they pro
vide a better and cheaper ser
vice, and then anyone can write
and say, ‘I’m a 1965 graduate of
the University of Oregon with a
B.A. degree’ when it’s probably
not true.”
Ezell says that Alumni Arts
has not been ordered to stop do
ing business, and that its case
will be heard by a federal grand
jury in North Carolina to deter
mine whether or not indict
ments for criminal offenses
should be handed down.
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