“Whatever you need, we have it,” the hawker promises, as he rattles off a long list of potential academic documents to be forged under the noses of Mexico’s top education officials.
Welcome to Santo Domingo Plaza, the historic center of the capital’s printing industry and now its main market for counterfeit documents. For as little as $600, customers can walk away with a fake college diploma and—of even more concern to government officials—a professional license in a field such as medicine, law, or engineering.
The colonial plaza sits across the street from Mexico’s Public Education Secretariat, which the fake-degree salespeople cynically refer to as “the competition.” The agency, Mexico’s equivalent of the U.S. Department of Education, issues some 60,000 professional licenses each month. The documents are mandatory in order to practice in 22 different fields.
But in a country plagued with corruption, and with competition for spots at public universities at an all-time high, many would-be students resort to buying their way to a college degree.
“It’s a very serious problem,” says Víctor Beltrán, director-general of professions for the Education Secretariat. “It’s extremely dangerous for someone to pretend to be a licensed professional, particularly in professions where they can put people’s lives at risk.”
In August, 22 federal health officials were arrested after their medical and psychology licenses turned out to be fakes, according to the El Universal newspaper. They included the technical director of the National Center for Blood Transfusions and the chief medical officer of the National Commission for Medical Arbitration, which rules on cases of malpractice.
The officials now face sentences of up to six years in prison.
The bust was the result of a government investigation of seven federal health agencies, including the national health system for private-sector employees and the capital’s main public hospital.
However, education officials say that such cases are relatively rare and that the arrested bureaucrats were longtime employees who were hired before security measures were in place.
“I’m not too alarmed,” says Rodolfo Tuirán, Mexico’s under secretary for higher education. “The issue isn’t whether we can stop the production of false degrees, but rather whether we have the mechanisms to detect them.”
Keeping Track
Starting in 1999, the Education Secretariat began keeping a national database of professionals to help potential employers in conducting background checks on job applicants. In 2007, to make the process easier, Mr. Beltrán created a free online database, which has since received more than 14 million searches from all over the world. In addition, department officials process 5,000 requests each month for document checks, at a cost of $20 apiece.
While most of the petitions are from government employers and courts, an increasing number of U.S. universities and hospitals are using the database to ensure that applicants to graduate programs or nursing jobs are legitimate professionals. The U.S. embassy here also conducts its own antifraud checks on documents submitted by Mexicans requesting student visas to the United States, Mr. Beltrán says.
In professions that do not require professional degrees, the forging of college diplomas is rampant. However, Mr. Beltrán argues that the government could not possibly keep a database of diplomas from the 16,000 institutions of higher education registered in Mexico, much less those issued in other countries.
Instead, each university is responsible for keeping a list of its graduates, which is open to the public.
As the world’s most populous Spanish-speaking country, Mexico also has the biggest market in counterfeit documents, Mr. Beltrán says. In addition, his office must also detect forged documents from other Latin American countries, whose citizens come to Mexico looking for work.
Fortunately, “most of the fakes are very easy to spot,” he says, holding up a copy of a counterfeit diploma from a university in the southern state of Oaxaca. “Just look at the flimsy paper. It’s not even close.”
A Global Industry
Of greater concern in Mexico are forged professional licenses. So in 2000, the government switched from a laminated paper booklet to a high-tech carbon-fiber card resembling a driver’s license. Mr. Beltrán, a lawyer and former rector of the Autonomous University of Baja California, has since been working with a German security company to introduce 24 different antifraud mechanisms. They include holograms and colored letters that change hue under an ultraviolet light.
Each month his team of 12 counterfeiting experts detects scores of false documents. Last year alone, they seized 370 professional licenses, 84 college degrees, and 179 college diplomas, he says.
Mr. Beltrán acknowledges that the real number of forged documents is probably many times greater, since students can also apply for professional licenses through the state education secretariats, where security measures vary widely.
Still, he and other officials argue that Mexico is not alone in battling the counterfeiting industry, whose global profits are estimated at $1-billion a year.
For example, China and Pakistan have been roiled recently by the proliferation of fake diplomas.
“I don’t see the problem,” Mr. Tuirán, the higher-education under secretary, insisted during a recent interview. “I don’t think Mexico is much different from other countries where you have this type of practices.”
However, he argues the need for judicial reforms that would require the state governments to introduce stiffer antifraud measures and prosecute the perpetrators.
Even in the capital, attempts to crack down on the counterfeiters are rare. Despite penalties of up to 10 years in jail, the document peddlers in Santo Domingo Plaza say they are willing to take the risk.
“If the police show up, we run,” says a hawker covered in tattoos, who declined to give his name. “But most of the time, they leave us alone.”
