ISLAMABAD: Mohamed Sabry Mostafa Yousef, an Egyptian national, thought to become a PhD scholar without wasting time on studies. He paid Rs3.127 million for masters and doctoral degrees, publication of ready-made articles on research journals and attestation of the acquired degrees from the US State Department as well as Egypt and Kuwait embassies.
He was promised to be invited in a convocation in Burj Khalifa, Dubai, along with family but all of his dreams shattered when the reality dawned that his degree-awarding universities, research journals and embassies were nothing more than a money-making business run under one-roof in the Axact building, Karachi.
Yousef threatened to ‘make a big noise’ in vain, reveals transcript of his conversation recovered by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) from the seized record and submitted before the court that also include proof of fee transaction through credit card.
When the FIA on Thursday claimed before the interior minister having in possession prosecutable evidences in the Axact’s degree fraud case, each word was backed by proof. The ambitious Egyptian national was not the only individual cheated; there is a long list of victims trapped in the vicious cycle of first paying for degree, then verification from accredited institutions and attestation from embassies and paying loads of money in the process without any gain.
Pakistanis are included in the list of victims. Some of them also admitted before the court receiving degrees as a simple MBBS received degree in gynaecology, an illiterate spiritual healer graduated in health sciences and a computer technician became engineer, courtesy Axact, now being cursed by victims in the court statements seen by ‘The News’.
Telephonic conversation played before the court during the course of previous hearings had already unfolded the size and scope of scandal explaining how the victims were lured into getting degrees.
Blackmailing of degree-holders would follow as Axact officials disguising themselves officials of different embassies directed them for verification that was again done by Axact under different price tags, reveals the recorded calls whose authenticity was determined through forensic tests.
Details gained further credence through a statement of Axact’s internal auditor, Rahim Sadruddin, who was supervising a section manned by 150 employees responsible for monitoring the conversation between clients (victims) and Axact’s sale agents (disguising as representatives of fake universities, accreditation institutions and embassies) for quality assurance.
“More than 50 times, I discussed the matter with Axact administration including Shoaib Ahmed Sheikh about the blackmailing of students by sales agents only to hear back to stay calm as it was being done under their supervision,” Rahim said in a statement submitted before the court.
He further explained the quick-fixes tried by Axact administration soon after the scandal broken by The York Times on May 17, 2005. The meeting chaired by Shoaib Sheikh on May 19 decided to withhold the shipment of degrees for five days, stop attestation for two weeks as well as collection of fee from USA students.
The money collected through blackmailing and extortion from students, Rahim further revealed, was credited in account number 898063612362 of ‘Global Academic Solutions LLC’ operated at M/s Bank of America (Swift Code BOFA US3N) in Florida, USA. “Monthly average sale of online education of two business units was US$6 to 6.5 million,” he told the court.
About the modus operandi he noted during the monitoring of conversation between clients and sales agents, Rahim said some of the sales agents under the command of Zeeshan Ahmed (head of one business unit of online education) were making threatening calls/ blackmailing students. They deceived by impersonating themselves as staff of embassies and accreditation bodies for blackmailing them into pay more.
“They used to give threat that their degrees are fake and subsequently criminal cases would be registered against them and they would be deported back to their countries. However, the degrees were issued to them by our company,” he further recorded.
As the students were subsequently directed to contact with the degree-awarding universities to resolve the matter, they would call to the university representatives who were actually the sales agent of Axact, he said.
The university representatives (sales agent) would advise anxious students to wait for a few days for the resolution of issues with the embassies/ accreditation institutions that were also run by Axact, Rahim explained.
The sales agent would call back to the students, saying the matter with embassies/ accreditation institutions had been resolved and that students would have to ‘pay additional charges amounting to thousands of dollars’ leaving no option for them but to pay, he disclosed.