The University of Spam

In the latest generation of diploma mills, nothing is real except for the money

In this report:

Map: Showing how the diploma-mill company called the University Degree Program operated in at least five countries

Article: Inside the Multimillion-Dollar World of Diploma Mills

Article: Professors With Bogus Degrees

Article: What’s a Diploma Mill?

Multimedia: An interactive graphic showing the cozy connections between the operators of unaccredited colleges (Requires Flash, available free from Macromedia.)

Article: A One-Woman University

Article: The Hypnotist Who Married Lana Turner

Text: Excerpts from a telemarketing script used by one diploma mill

Article: Fighting FakeryBy THOMAS BARTLETT and SCOTT SMALLWOOD

In your e-mail inbox, next to advertisements for cheap prescription drugs and unbelievably low mortgage rates, there are probably a few messages promising that you -- yes, you! -- can receive a college degree without ever cracking a book.

Want a bachelor’s? Can do. A master’s? Sure thing. How about a Ph.D.? No problem.

Call the telephone number in the message, listen to a well-crafted spiel, whip out your credit card, and within a few days a crisp new diploma will arrive on your doorstep. Congratulations! You are now a college graduate!

This is not your father’s diploma mill. In fact, this is not like any diploma mill that ever existed. It is speedier and more sophisticated than its fraudulent predecessors. It is also more secretive and better at eluding the authorities. Best of all for the operators, it’s the most profitable, generating millions of dollars each year.

The granddaddy of such operations is the University Degree Program, which began operating in the mid-1990s. It offered diplomas from bogus institutions with names like the University of Wexford, Shelbourne University, and the University of Palmers Green. Last year, after an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, its owners turned over $100,000 in profits and promised to stay out of the degree-selling business.

But the e-mailing hasn’t stopped. The call centers haven’t closed. And the money hasn’t stopped flowing. If anything, the business has grown.

This is a look at an international diploma-mill company that has customers and offices around the world. The story comes from interviews with insiders and investigators, who described how the University Degree Program, owned by an American couple, sold tens of thousands of fake degrees from its call centers in Israel and Romania. It also comes from court records, previously unreleased documents from the FTC, and interviews with those who have followed the rise of the company and those it spawned.

The Chronicle also tracked down one of its reclusive owners, a mother of four who has a Ph.D. in mathematics and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. She is among those who, according to insiders and investigators, helped transform the diploma-mill business from an old-fashioned scam into a well-oiled industry.

Rabbi’s Blessing?

Aaron’s day used to begin at midnight. After a bumpy bus ride through the streets of Jerusalem, he would arrive in Mea Shearim, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood where most of the residents live simply and conform to centuries-old traditions.

While the rest of the neighborhood slept, three small, shabby buildings buzzed with activity. Aaron (not his real name) worked for several years in a building everyone called “the office,” where most of the administrative duties, like record-keeping and payroll accounting, were handled. He made sure to clock in before taking a seat at his computer. The company’s managers kept strict track of employees’ hours and didn’t hesitate to fire slackers. Aaron liked his job because it was easy and paid fairly well -- 60 shekels, or about $15, an hour.

The salespeople made the real money -- sometimes as much as $10,000 a month. Most of them, like Aaron, were Orthodox Jews. The men wore long beards and yarmulkes. The women dressed modestly, with head coverings, as their Orthodox custom demands. Men and women worked in separate buildings; in this neighborhood, members of the opposite sex are discouraged from working side by side.

The company’s managers had assured the 50 or so employees that what they were doing -- selling college degrees over the telephone -- was perfectly legal and ethical. They even said the company had been blessed by several rabbis, which Aaron wasn’t sure he believed. He had doubts about what he was doing, but the money was pretty good, and Aaron, who had been born and raised in the United States, spoke only broken Hebrew, making it tougher to find a steady job in Israel.

The offices were poorly lighted, the cubicles nothing but carpet and plywood. Each building had a single, cramped bathroom. The windows were painted over or covered by heavy drapes. Aaron and his colleagues would complain about the accommodations. After all, the company was making a lot of money -- the Jerusalem office often brought in more than $500,000 a month, he says -- so why not spring for a few nice chairs and a decent coffeemaker?

The hotshots in sales were paid on commission and received performance-based bonuses. Whenever one of them made a sale, the salesperson would write his or her name and the dollar amount on a big whiteboard. Price was very negotiable. One customer might pay $2,400 for a Ph.D. in psychology. Another customer, the same day, might pay $800. The salesperson got a cut, usually 10 to 20 percent. Those who sold $20,000 worth of degrees in a month got a $2,500 bonus. Those who sold $40,000 got an extra $9,000. Top sellers were rewarded handsomely. Mediocre sellers were fired.

Aaron’s tasks included the sort of drudgery that goes on at every office in every kind of business. He watched other employees actually create the phony degrees, using a template in a computer program. All they had to do was punch in the customer’s name, the type of degree, and the graduation date. They added a line saying whether the person graduated cum laude, magna cum laude, or summa cum laude (customers could receive any distinction they wished, free). The degrees were then e-mailed to a printing shop in Los Angeles. From there they were sent via Federal Express to “graduates” around the world.

‘A Scary Man’

Aaron played a minor role in a major scam, one that sold more than 30,000 degrees and may have earned $50-million or perhaps in excess of $100-million. The first estimate comes from Aaron, who had access to the company’s computer files. But a former FBI agent, Allen Ezell, who has followed the University Degree Program for years, thinks that the total could be much more.

The company’s customers were teachers and businessmen, engineers and government officials, among others. It sold any kind of degree the customer wanted, including many in medical fields, like pediatrics and cardiovascular surgery. And it made the originators of the scheme, who managed to stay out of the public eye, quite rich.

The University Degree Program was owned by Jason and Caroline Abraham, an American couple who usually go by the Hebrew names Yaakov and Chaya Rochel. Ms. Abraham, who earned a doctorate in mathematics from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1979, ran the Jerusalem office. She was the one who decided who got fired, although she didn’t usually do the firing herself. Aaron describes her as quiet with a good sense of humor. The employees liked her, he says.

They didn’t feel the same way about her husband. Mr. Abraham, described as short and pudgy, with a long, white beard, “looked like Santa,” Aaron says, “until he opened his mouth. Then everyone was afraid of him.” Mr. Abraham was loud and volatile. “He is a scary man,” says Aaron, who remains frightened of his former boss, which is why he asked that his real name be withheld.

Mr. Abraham, according to the FTC, spent most of his time in Bucharest, Romania, running the University Degree Program’s Eastern European office. It, too, employed about 50 people, most of whom sold degrees over the telephone. In the Bucharest office, they sold phony international driver’s licenses, as well. Most of the employees were from Romania, with a few from other countries. They worked in a building that also housed a bar and a modeling agency, which Mr. Abraham reportedly owned. Originally from Boston, he sometimes referred to himself as a rabbi. He traveled with a bodyguard and was chauffeured around Bucharest in a limousine. Employees called him the “King of Romania” behind his back.

Not much is known about how the couple got into the business. Unlike some other founders of diploma mills, who seem to enjoy their notoriety, the Abrahams have maintained a low profile. They have never given interviews. They did not meet with FTC investigators, communicating only through their lawyer. While they have done an effective job of advertising their service online -- building it into what may be the largest diploma-mill operation in history -- the Abrahams themselves have remained out of sight.

Instant Respectability

Part of what made the University Degree Program so innovative was its ability to change its name, and therefore its image, almost instantly. If a negative article appeared in a newspaper about, say, Parkwood University, that was fine: The Abrahams just changed the name to Northfield or something else that sounded equally British and respectable. To keep annoying reporters, referred to at the company as “flamers,” from exposing the scam, one institutional name would be used on the telephone while another would actually appear on the diploma. You thought you were graduating from Thornewood University, but the diploma that arrived in the mail would say the University of Ravenhurst.

A letter sent to customers explained why: “The policy of not disclosing the name of the University protects you against unscrupulous individuals who do not approve of self study and life style improvement.” The letter added that this was done to avoid “bad publicity.”

The Abrahams even created Web sites for each of their diploma-granting institutions. To the casual observer, the sites looked real enough. But poke around and they started to look suspicious. Why were no faculty members listed? Why, under “contact information,” was there just an e-mail address? Why did the “history” section for Landford University, for example, say nothing about when it was founded, who founded it, or where it was located?

The company also offered fake transcripts and phony recommendation letters that customers could use to bolster the fraud. There was even a telephone number that potential employers could call to “verify” a job applicant’s degree. Customers of the University Degree Program were buying more than a fake diploma. They were buying a service.

In May 2003, the Federal Trade Commission, in cooperation with Israeli authorities, shut down the Mea Shearim office. The settlement reached between the FTC and the owners of the University Degree Program alleged “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” on UDP’s part, although in the agreement the Abrahams did not admit any wrongdoing. The FTC also ordered them to stop selling degrees.

But have they?

Another degree-selling operation has since opened in a different part of Jerusalem, using the same marketing techniques. The e-mail messages are remarkably similar to those sent by the University Degree Program. The script used by salespeople is nearly identical. And there is evidence that similar call centers have popped up in other parts of the world, too, judging by the heavy accents of some of the salespeople. (Many are told not to reveal their location; some customers who bought degrees from the University Degree Program say they believed that they were talking to operators in London.) And whoever is running the new operation is also creating phony Web sites for the fake institutions.

Whether the Abrahams or their former employees are behind the renewed scam is unclear. Mr. Abraham did not respond to an interview request made through his lawyer, Eric M. Rubin, of Washington. “He’s not in that business anymore -- at least as far as I know,” says Mr. Rubin. Ms. Abraham, who lives in Brooklyn, has an unlisted telephone number. The only way to speak with her is to show up at her door.

Sorry, No Answers

It’s a $50 cab ride from midtown Manhattan to Caroline Abraham’s modest duplex in the Marine Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. The trees form a canopy over the quiet street in front of her home. There is a synagogue nearby, a rabbinical school a few blocks away.

The door is answered by a soft-spoken woman, who looks to be in her 50s, with graying brown hair. She is dressed in a dark-green, ankle-length skirt and button-down sweater, with small gold earrings and pointed, patent-leather shoes.

I introduce myself and ask if she is Caroline Abraham.

“Yes,” she says, half-hiding behind the door. “What is this about?”

A miniature white poodle pushes past Ms. Abraham onto the front stoop. She grabs the tiny dog, cradling it in one arm.

I explain that I’m interested in a business called the University Degree Program.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I really don’t have anything to say.”

I tell her I’ve heard that she helped run a call center for the company in Jerusalem.

“I’ve spent some time in Israel,” she says, declining to answer more directly.

I ask several more questions, each of which she declines to answer. She is polite, even warm in her refusals, saying she is sorry that I’ve come such a long way to speak with her. One question she doesn’t answer -- the one I care most about -- is how she got involved in the first place. How did someone who is, according to her former graduate adviser, an extremely religious person, find herself running such an operation? How did a woman with a Ph.D. in mathematics, the author of a paper on graph algebras that won acclaim in her field, turn to selling fake diplomas over the telephone?

“Are you still in the degree business?” I ask her.

“What does the FTC say?” she replies.

“They say you’re not.”

“Well ...,” she says, as if that settles the matter.

I can see beyond her into the living room. Several books with Hebrew titles are stacked next to a television. I do not see the laptop computer that a former employee says Ms. Abraham used to monitor the Jerusalem call center when she was in New York. I do not see any indication of the millions of dollars that she and her husband are thought to have earned from the scheme. The furnishings in her home are simple and the decorations few.

Under the agreement with the Federal Trade Commission, if it turns out that the Abrahams lied about their financial situation (they said, in short, that the money was gone), the couple can be fined $5-million. Those familiar with the case say there is little doubt that the Abrahams have money hidden in overseas bank accounts. There is also little chance that authorities will ever get their hands on it.

Because she is not willing to discuss the University Degree Program, I ask Ms. Abraham how I can learn more about the operation. She suggests that I respond to one of the numerous e-mail messages promising instant college degrees.

“There are lots of people doing this. I get the e-mails all the time,” she says, closing the door as she speaks. “Everyone does.”

http://chronicle.com Section: Special Report Volume 50, Issue 42, Page A14