WASHINGTON, July 30: Immigration officials are looking through a list of more than 9,000 names to see how many federal employees may have bought a phony high school or college degree from a Spokane, Washington-based diploma mill.

The Spokesman-Review newspaper obtained the list and published the names on its website on Monday.

The Justice Department has refused to release the list, which grew out of a lengthy investigation by the US attorney for the Eastern district of Washington.

The list included some people who apparently work for government, educational institutions and the military, according to their e-mail addresses that ended in .gov, .edu or .mil., according to the newspaper report.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, one of the federal agencies that investigates document fraud, is going through the list of 9,612 names and searching for federal employees, agency spokesman Brandon Alvarez-Montgomery said.

It is not known how many Homeland Security Department employees are on this list, he said. But the department’s inspector general is investigating what ICE finds. ICE is part of the 208,000-strong department.

Authorities contended the bogus degrees could be used to circumvent US immigration laws and to help the degree holders win promotions and pay raises in government jobs.

A task force of state and federal agents served search warrants in August 2005 after investigators found many of the phony degrees were sold in Saudi Arabia, raising national security concerns.

As ICE officials go through the list and identify the federal employees, their names will be sent to their respective agencies for inspector general review, Alvarez-Montgomery said.—AP