Degrees sold for Pounds 15,000

Police at Rome's La Sapienza University, Europe's largest with 180,000 students, have exposed a fraud ring that sold forged degrees for between Pounds 12,000 and Pounds 15,000.

So far, an administrative official in the department of statistical sciences and eight purchasers of the bogus degrees have been officially denounced. But police are searching for accomplices and suspect there may be many more forged degrees still to be discovered.

The scam at La Sapienza worked perfectly because the organisation not only produced near-perfect forgeries of degree certificates on parchment, but also doctored university computer records to create an entire academic curriculum: courses taken and exams passed for people who had never set foot on campus.

Suspicions were aroused in August when the dean of statistical sciences discovered that a number of blank degree certificates were missing. A computer check revealed more graduates than there should have been.

The extra graduates had the matriculation numbers of students who had dropped out or had moved to other departments. Definitive proof of the fraud could not be obtained through the university computer records, which had been tampered with, but only from records on paper.

In Italy, the rigidly regulated employment laws and the legal status of degrees mean that a degree opens the way to posts in the civil service and promotion in the private sector. It also makes the forgery of a degree a serious crime, defined as "fraud in a public document".

The false graduates discovered so far are four insurance agents, two bank employees, a company executive and a city councillor.

This is not the first false degree scandal at La Sapienza. But according to Sapienza's rector, Giuseppe D'Ascenzo, the fact that the fraud was exposed "shows how La Sapienza is being renewed. Soon the computer system will be reformed - a guarantee for students against the malpractice of purchased degrees".