A BBC investigation has thrown new light on the Axact scandal involving business of fake professional degrees of non-existent colleges and universities.

Contrary to the common perception in Pakistan about the 'degree mill' operation being over, the BBC investigation, broadcast in the UK on Radio 4 on Tuesday night, revealed that the lucrative fake degrees business was still flourishing with the Axact call centres humming with activity and its agents ruthlessly fleecing their victims impersonating as representatives of famous universities and selling them fake degree on payment of huge fees.

Another sad aspect of the fraudulent money-minting enterprise, unearthed during the investigation, was the extortion and blackmailing tactics adopted the Axact agents to extract more money from victims. In one case study presented in the programme, the Exact agents posed as representatives of a foreign government and a US university respectively to blackmail their victim and forced them to pay them extortion money.

The scandal originally uncovered by New York Times investigation in May 2015 revealed the Karachi-based IT company was maintaining over 300 websites of universities and high schools, with elegant names and smiling professors at sun-dappled American campuses, earning tens of millions of dollars in estimated revenue each year from many thousands of people around the world.

According to the BBC team, they have written to Axact but no one responded.

Fake degree to BBC reporter

A BBC reporter calls a number given on the website of Nixon University to buy a fake degree and he is put through to an agent calling himself Jerry Louis.

Nixon University was part of the original NY Times investigation as well as in the list drawn by CBC.

“Jerry” explains to BBC reporter how he will get what he calls a course exemption degree converting his experience into a qualification and a degree from an American university. The agent, however, never asks what experience he has. He is told that as the Nixon University is a US based university so he will get an approval from he government of the United States.

“Jerry” takes him through the courses for his degree in international business despite the fact that he knows nothing about the subject.

The agent informs him about the course he will be doing and said he will get a shiny degree certificate from Nixon University within one month.

The initial deal with the BBC reporter is stuck at a fee of 3,649 dollars. In ten minutes he orders a degree and even got a mock up of a certificate although he never actually hands over the money.

Later, when the BBC reporter challenges him over the authenticity of the educational institution and asks the agent about the address of Nixon University campus, he first says that it is in Southern California and the disappears.

Another man who claims to be John Anderson takes over and says that their office is in Washington DC. On further questioning he says that they have different branches -- in California, Miami and other US cities.

At this point BBC reporter called him out.

“Not only have you been selling fake degrees you’ve also been extorting money. We’ve talked to people who you’ve taken 100s of thousands of pounds from them, vulnerable people,” he tells him.

The agent remains totally unaffected by the otherwise serious allegations and threatens the BBC reporter of legal action.

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ll make sure my legal team come to you”, he tells the BBC reporter.

According to the confidential documents reportedly seen by the BBC, Axact still controls a huge operation selling bogus degrees around the world.

“Conman” as whistleblower

During the course of investigation BBC interviewed an ex-employee of Axact who confirmed that the fake degrees business was still going on and that the company was resorting to extortion to make up for dwindling revenues due to media spotlight.

In the Radio 4 programme, the Axact ex-employee is introduced as “Muhammad” to protect his identity and his interview is voiced by an actor.

“The word was getting out, selling degrees was getting harder, so naturally I came up with the whole idea, along with the assistance of a few others, that we should now move into the whole extortion racket,” he tells BBC.

“For me to actually proclaim that I’m on some moral high ground, that would be absolutely untrue,” he says. “We would high five, make jokes about people squandering their lives, that’s how it worked,” he adds.

Axact must have realised they had a huge database of tens of thousands of customers around the world whom they could potentially blackmail and they did this with some of the UK clients who had bought their qualifications while working overseas

Fear and tears

BBC investigation team talked to the son of a British civil engineer who was blackmailed by an Axact team after he unwittingly bought a fake degree from Brooklyn Park University and forced to part with at least 600,000 dollar before his death last year.

Malcolm Horner tells the BBC that his father spent over two decades as a civil engineer in Saudi Arabia. He died in 2015 and it was only when we were going through his Dad's papers that we discovered a secret.

“We found he had these degree certificates and he'd printed off and kept a series of emails back and forth with people from these universities and found evidence that, he'd spent a lot of money kind of acquiring qualifications from the - like a lot of money,” Malcolm tells BBC.

“It was about 300,000 dollars and then reading through it - it became clear that it - it wasn't just a case of him acquiring qualifications, it was them then chasing him up, having done that to - essentially blackmailing him, saying, "You've got degrees that aren't official. We'll report you to the foreign office, they'll kick you out of the country, you'll lose your jobs, you're not qualified for the job you're doing," and that - and that clearly got him scared and - and very wound up.”

Cecil Horner has been contacted by someone from Brooklyn Park University saying there is a problem with a degree he’d bought while working in Saudi Arabia. Cecil listens in to a conference call he believes is between the university and an official from the Saudi embassy in Washington.

As Cecil Horner listens in these men spin an elaborate tale about how they are colluding to make sure his fake degree is hidden from the Saudi authorities. The man and the woman on the call are both fakes sitting in an Axact call centre in Pakistan. They come up with a solution to sort it out for 16k dollars – about 1k dollars for each minute they were on the phone to Cecil.

“Mohammad” knows the case well and told BBC that Axact took over $ two million off him. He says the gentleman actually ended up paying 387,000 dollars on one single phone call.

According to the BBC investigation, at the time of his death Cecil’s account was entirely empty and had credit card debts ranging more than 300,000 dollars in Saudi Arabia. His company account, his company end of service benefits were completely drained and he had in his last days ended up taking a 50,000 dollar loan from the company for this specific reason.

According to the BBC investigation there are countless other Axact victims in the UK. “There was the British psychologist who paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to Axact - the documents we had seen showed she was the single largest UK customer - we suspected she might be selling them on but it turns out she was another victim of extortion,” says the reporter in the Radio 4 programme.

“She had been paying, she had been paying for years, she started off with Belford University back in 2009, but she had never actually paid so much,” Muhammad tells BBC. “ I was responsible for the financial massacre when I first started, was shared her lead of her information in 2014, that’s when she started paying very crazy money and she had ended up paying almost, almost near about half a million pounds altogether from 2014, June to 2015 April,” he says.

BBC doesn’t name the woman and makes an actor voice her interview saying she has been traumatised by her experience with Axact.

“I had plenty of qualifications for the UK but I thought that registering with a university in the USA might be helpful if I wanted to obtain a position there,” the woman tells BBC.

“I contacted Belford and I sent them my CV, thesis etc. after which they awarded me what they called an Honary Doc’.....Sometime later, they contacted me and they said that as I was continuing to stay in the UK I needed to register my USA qualifications here. I was told that Paramount California University(PCU) had offices in London and I could be awarded a PhD from them and UK registration could go ahead. I was pressurised to register and financial demands were made as if I had no choice. I do not know exactly how much I paid…..I cannot give an interview. I would be putting my life at risk.”

Call for global action

Allen Ezell, a former FBI agent and author of book “Degree Mills” calls for a global initiative and world-wide crackdown against companies involved in such a heinous crime. “Fake degrees are the perfect crime - a way to fleece people and with little chance of the authorities catching you,” he tells BBC.

“In order o stop them it needs concerted international action. Law enforcement has to do their job, take out all the brokers in this country, anyone that helps sell this garbage paper take them, build a case get your arrest warrants. There's nothing like a set of handcuffs that'll get a message across quickly get some convictions and let the word get out.”

A version of this story was published in Dawn, January 17th, 2018