Fraud consultants, bogus certificates, gullible students: How hundreds of Indians are faking the American dream

With the rise in lucrative job offers in the US in the IT sector, students, who could not score good marks in engineering, are getting fake certificates and visas with the help of consultants, who are charging lakhs of rupees, to send them abroad.

Hyderabad:A massive scam of bogus educational and work certificates has been unearthed by police in several states of India so much so that 56 'consultants' and students have been arrested in the last few months, many of whom had travelled to the US using fake credentials.

The pan-India crackdown on these 'consultants' was intensified especially after a family of four, including two children, from Kalol in Gujarat, froze to death while illegally crossing into the US from Canada on January 19. A month later, the Crime Branch in Ahmedabad had unearthed a major illegal immigration racket, arresting four people and seizing 78 passports, 13 election cards, 23 PAN cards, rubber stamps of banks, and details of forged bank accounts.

The desire to go abroad

Lakhs of students in India wish to study or work in foreign countries with the US being the number one destination on their dream list. However, getting an admission to a US-based university is a hard nut to crack, not to mention the massive amount of money one needs to shell out. Besides, many enter the US on student visas without any actual plans to study. These 'students' then do odd jobs as delivery boys, drive cabs, or wait tables to earn dollars, and live their Indian-American Dream.

While many of these 'students' are ready to pay the money to go abroad, they hit a dead-end when it comes to their academic credentials. That is where the 'consultants' come into the picture. They have everything on the menu: work experience certificates, degree certificates (especially engineering degrees), improving one's marks in existing certificates, and so on.

The racket

The number of such students going to America with fake engineering degrees is steadily increasing. The US embassy in Delhi has received a series of complaints about these irregularities. Based on the complaints, the Delhi police took up an investigation and found several people were already working in the US with fake credentials. At least 20 such people were arrested as soon as they landed in India and their visas were revoked so that they could not go back to the US.

In Hyderabad, I20 Abroad Consultancy Services at Chaitanyapuri is one such place for these gullible youth. Its owner Kapil (who was only identified by his first name) was arrested on March 10. According to the police, the consultancy not only submitted a fake bank statement, but also fake certificates were issued to a student from Musheerabad in Hyderabad stating that he had worked in the past. Four more were arrested in other areas of Hyderabad while two were held in Guntur in Andhra Pradesh, along with other workers of two consultancies and students who had obtained fake certificates from them.

Modus Operandi

Consultancy managers, who make fake degrees, have links with lower-level officials and professors of some universities. According to sources, duplicate degrees made in the names of several universities in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand, as well as the Telugu states.

During the intensified investigation into the racket, police were able to identify and arrest at least 56 people -- most of them consultancy operators, while a few of them were the students -- all in a span of six months.

From them, fake deeds related to Osmania, Telangana, Kakatiya, Andhra Pradesh, Acharya Nagarjuna and JNTUH were seized. "The consultants are making fake certificates by copying the signatures of the Vice-Chancellors and holograms of universities and it is very difficult to differentiate between a fake and genuine. Such is their expertise," a police officer, probing the racket, told ETV Bharat.

Among the materials found were fake degrees from Magadha, Bundelkhand, Karnataka Open University, Tamil Nadu Anna University and Satyabhama University in Chennai. Police found that some of the accused, who run the consultancies, have agreements with foreign varsities in the US, the UK and Scotland. Consultancies are taking foreign varsities and companies for a ride by creating fake degrees and experience certificates. Naveed, who ran one such 'consultancy' in Hyderabad, made and sent fake degrees to students studying at Teesside, Blackpool, University Law in the UK, Schiller and Concordia Universities in the US.

In Warangal, consultants Ravi Avinash, Srinivas Yadav, and others sent students to different countries in Europe. Police learned that some of them were now working in reputed companies. According to him, those who are being sent abroad to study without any qualifications are being charged Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh and those who score fewer marks in engineering are being charged up to Rs 2 lakhs for increasing their existing grades.

"Police found that 400 people, who were working in different software companies in the US, hailing from Warangal and Hyderabad, went there on fake certificates and visas provided by these 'consultancies'," the officer said.

Read: US consulate cracks down candidates with fake documents for job abroad