Hyderabad: 4 sell fake university certificates, nabbed

Hyderabad: Rachakonda special operations team (SOT) personnel busted a fake certificate racket operating from LB Nagar, with employees of some colleges and universities found to be involved in the scam.

The colleges and universities involved in the scam used to enter the details of candidates on their website without actually conducting any examinations and gave them fake certificates. Police arrested four persons from the city while three others are still at large.

Acting on a tip-off that fake certificates were being arranged for candidates  aspiring to pursue distance education through AIM Educations Centre, a consultancy run from LB Nagar, SOT personnel apprehended its owner Shaik Peeru Saheb, 30, Ameer Ahmed Baig, 41, who supplies fake certificates, P. Prashanth Gerhardi,  24, and T. Uma Maheswara Chary, 26.

Rachakonda police said on Monday that Saheb, a native of Anaparthy of Andhra Pradesh came to the city in 2011 and started AIM Educations. He advertised about providing graduate and postgraduate certificates in the distance education mode and single-sitting mode through certain institutions. He started selling fake certificates since March 2018. When a student approached Saheb, he assured that he would provide a certificate and claimed that the certificate can be verified online by requesting an email or postal copy from the organisation.

Convinced with this, aspirants paid about 50 to 70 per cent of the money towards advance and provided their previous academic certificates and identification cards. These were used by Saheb to get fake certificates through his friend Ameen, said police.

The gang charged Rs 60,000 to Rs 80,000 from BA, BCom, BBA and BSc courses, Rs 80,000 to Rs 1 lakh for MA, MBA and MSc courses and between '2.5 lakh to '3 lakh for engineering certificates.

Rachakonda police commissioner Mahesh Bhagwat said that Ameen, who has contacts with several educational consultancies, had colluded with the staff of a few universities to get fake certificates for the candidates he referred.

“All money transactions were through Ameen’s bank accounts.  Navdeep Bhatia, who works for William Carey University at Shillong sent certificates to Ameen through WhatsApp to confirm before dispatching and then entered the details of the candidate on the university website. There are eight universities from where the accused persons got fake certificates,” said the commissioner.

He said that two others, Prashanth and Chary, had obtained engineering and degree certificates from William Cary University without writing the exams.
Navdeep, Abhishek Gupta working at Manav Bharti University in Himachal Pradesh and Ravinder Singh working at Veer Sawarkar University at Bihar, are absconding.

The team seized 103 fake certificates, Rs 2.73 lakh cash, two phones, and computer peripherals from the accused. Police said 54 certificates were issued in the names of William Carey University, 12 in Manav Bharath University, 12 in Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar University, Agra, 7 in Magadh University, 7 in Veer Kumar Singh University, 5 in University of Allahabad, 3 in Monad University, and 3 in Kannur University.

The commissioner said, “Most institutions are issuing fake certificates on receiving information from directors of private institutions.”

without conducting any examination for the candidates. They enrol the candidate’s details as per the issued certificate so that an online verification done by any third party would find the documents to be genuine. Several students who  acquired fake certificates are using them to get jobs.”