In early July, Dixie Ellen Randock was sentenced to 3 years in prison for Conspiracy to Commit Wire and Mail Fraud. Her husband, Steve Randock, is scheduled to be sentenced in about a week. Dixie is a high school drop out. What did they do? They have been found guilty of this crime for selling bogus college degrees and high school diplomas from a Spokane, WA diploma mill. The newspaper The Seattle Times (www.seattletimes.com) has since published a couple of lists. One list shows all the people who have purchased degrees and diplomas from this diploma mill – all 9,612 people. Some of these people have multiple degrees that were awarded from this mill.
The US Department of Justice had refused to release the list to the public, and the newspaper is not saying how they obtained the list. The newspaper has conducted a preliminary analysis that shows 135 of these individuals have military ties, 39 have links to the education system, and 17 are employed with government agencies. They got this information through the email addresses that are listed for the individuals (.mil, .gov, or .edu). Their listing does indicate that some of the people who have (*) by their names didn’t necessarily buy degrees, but that their names surfaced for various reasons during the investigation.
What these people were purchasing were bogus degrees from non-existent, online, high schools, colleges and universities. They were also buying counterfeit degrees from real colleges and universities and that documentation was forged. Some of the more than 100 fake schools that degrees were issued from have names that sound like an accredited college that we have all heard of.
Keep in mind that it is not illegal to possess a fake degree. If you wish to spend $1,000 to $10,000 for a piece of paper to hang on your wall you are entitled to it. It is illegal to use the degree fraudulently. You can not use it to obtain employment, increased benefits, promotion, or for any other purposes. Unfortunately, with the almost 10,000 people out there with “degrees” from this diploma mill, it is going to be up to the private employer to determine if their employees have degrees or diplomas from a fake institution. That burden is going to rest on the human resource staff.
