Forgers caught with passports, visas, degrees
5 visiting Chinese students charged in most ambitious counterfeit racket in Ontario history
Apr 14, 2007 02:30 AM
Louise Brown
Education Reporter
Cost of a fake high school diploma: $700.
Forged university degree: $1,000 to $3,000.
One bachelor degree plus working visa: $7,000.
The chance to buy yourself a brand spanking new life in Canada based on fake IDs churned out for years inside a quiet red brick home in Markham?
Priceless.
But the jig is up after York Regional Police say they shut down what is believed to be one of the most ambitious counterfeit document rackets in Ontario history.
MICHAEL STUPARYK / TORONTO STAR
George Granger of the Ontario Universities’ Application Centre, left, reviews forged diplomas and other documents with York Regional Police Chief Armand LaBarge.
Displaying an array of confiscated fake degrees from universities from Toronto and Montreal to the Maritimes – plus crisp copies of passports from Canada and China, Ontario driver’s licenses and even fake legal stamps from colleges and lawyers – police announced yesterday they have charged five visiting Chinese students with forgery of alarming proportions.
“This was a full-service agency; a complex operation that would allow people to obtain entry into Canada or stay in Canada, get jobs around the world unlawfully,” said York Detective Fred Kerr at the announcement yesterday in Markham.
“In my 30 years on the job, I’ve never seen forged university degrees or mark transcripts – they even produced high school diplomas.”
Yet we all pay the costs when companies hire unqualified workers based on false credentials and end up having to fire them and find someone new – at a cost often passed on to the public, warned Len Crispino, president of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, which represents 57,000 employers across the province.
“It’s a double whammy for the employer and it’s not fair to qualified people who miss out on jobs because someone used false credentials,” he said.
Lawyer Diana Young had illegal copies of her red-handled legal stamp turn up at the two-storey house on Eastpine Dr. – even though she keeps the real ones locked in an office drawer.
“These stamps are supposed to certify legal documents signed in my office with at least one witness, but I guess anyone can say they’re a lawyer and get a stamp made,” said Young yesterday from her Finch Ave. office, which serves clients in English, Cantonese and Mandarin.
The counterfeit ring advertised over the Internet in Chinese, including a price list with jazzy lightning bolts beside each item for sale and the breathless headline “Best Price! Best Service! Fastest!”
Police and university officials say the fakes were indistinguishable from the real thing; the accused only got caught when police grew suspicious of their behaviour while investigating a different crime nearby.
“This was quite a brazen operation. You could create an entire false identity” with the range of documents being pumped out of the high-quality printers in the house once shared by all five accused students, said York Police Chief Armand La Barge.
On display yesterday were replicated degrees from the University of Toronto, York, the University of Western Ontario, Carleton, Brock, Concordia, the University of Montreal, Seneca College, George Brown College, Fanshawe College, Cape Breton University, and the seal of Cambrian College.
Police said these are merely a sample of the schools whose degrees were copied.
Also on display were two high-quality printers confiscated along with five computers and two laptops, said Detective Matthew Ma, an expert in high-tech crime.
He pointed to a fake Chinese passport still sitting in the tray of one printer, and said counterfeit transcript forms from York University were also in the machine when it was seized.
Yet universities note that these fakes prove the value of a Canadian degree.
“To have gone to this trouble reflects the high value a Canadian university (degree) is worth in the international market,” said University of Toronto spokesperson Robert Steiner.
The university gets several hundred calls each week from prospective employers and other universities seeking to confirm the validity of a U of T degree, and only a handful ever prove to be false, he said – “and those calls tend to come from overseas.”
But university degrees aren’t easy to copy, he said – and not just because they’re kept under lock and key.
“Our transcripts are printed on currency-quality paper that can’t really be photocopied without the word `copy’ showing through,” he said.
“Each sheet is numbered by the supplier before we get it, and spoiled transcripts are destroyed.
“We actually treat these documents like currency.”
But the alleged fraud artists did their homework, said Kerr – somehow reproducing the water marks often set into the fibre of the paper used in the degrees, as well as other fake-busting details included on the back of some documents.
Too, if the degree was supposed to have been granted in the mid-1990s, for example, it carried the correct university president’s signature for that year.
“Universities are like cities and towns; anything that goes on in a city can happen in a university, where people live, work and study,” said George Granger, executive director of the Ontario Universities’ Application Centre.
“All the human elements are drawn to university, and sometimes they aren’t the most positive.”
http://www.thestar.com/article/203054
Fake visas, degrees ‘alarming’
Apr 13, 2007 01:58 PM
Louise Brown
Education Reporter
Five Chinese students in Canada on student visas have been charged with one of the most ambitious counterfeit document rings in Ontario history.
York Regional Police have charged the four men and one woman with producing “hundreds, if not thousands” of fake passports, visas, driver’s licenses and university degrees over several years and selling them over the Internet, complete with a breezy price list.
“In my 30 years on the job, I’ve never seen forged university degrees or mark transcripts – they even did high school diplomas,” said Detective Fred Kerr this morning at a press conference where many of the fake degrees and documents were on display.
“This was quite a brazen operation. They were charging $18,000 for immigration papers and enough other documents that you could create an entire false identity,” said Police Chief Armand La Barge.
“It was an incredible undertaking and appears to have been going for several years. It’s alarming that there is a criminal market for these kinds of documents.”
York plainclothes police stumbled on the counterfeit ring recently while investigating a string of car thefts and through what La Barge calls “good old-fashioned police work,” uncovered the operation in a home on Eastpine Drive in Markham.
Police confiscated five computers, two laptops and several printers from the house, said Detective Matthew Ma, an expert on hi-tech crime, “and one of the printers still held a false Chinese passport and a York University marks transcript.”
“I’ve never seen quality like this,” said Ma. “I can’t tell the difference between the false and the originals. We believe they scanned the originals and then added people’s names.”
Police said they have no idea yet how many documents were sold over the years, or which university’s degrees were reproduced more than others.
“But the confiscated computers hold 700 gigs of memory, and it takes one hour for an officer to go through one gig of memory – so that tells you the scope of the material we have to go through,” said Superintendent Wayne Kalinski.
Police would not say which university or college the accused students are enrolled in, when they came to Canada, or if their own credentials are rock-solid.
MICHAEL STUPARYK/TORONTO STAR
York Regional Police held a press conference today to display samples of counterfeit passports, university degrees, driver’s licenses and visas seized in a raid.
“To the best of our knowledge, their own student visas were valid,” said La Barge. “But given the quality of their forgeries, we can’t be sure until further investigation,”
George Granger, executive director of the Ontario Universities’ Application Centre, said fake degrees hurt not only the universities’ reputation but threaten the value of degrees earned by the majority of hardworking students.
He said while most universities keep letterhead and transcript forms in locked vaults, these forgeries managed to reproduce even such security tools as the water marks on degree paper meant to prove they are geniuine.
“With the advancements in computer technology, I suspect universities will be reviewing our measures to protect the integrity of our degrees.”
