Qualifications fraud is real, and evolving; artificial intelligence is making fake documents such as diploma certificates faster and cheaper to make, and more convincing than ever. But it’s not all doom and gloom, because opportunity exists to make solutions. That’s according to a webinar by the verification service Prospects Hedd, that ran during International Fraud Awareness Week 2025.
In sum, the service makes the case that fakes generated by AI are increasing; which implies the need for employers and universities to work together more on verification; though it noted the UK doesn’t have such a ‘routine mechanism’, and hence without a ‘trust framework’, AI can exploit any gap. “They aren’t abstract questions any more,” said Jake Shumilin of Hedd.
Opening the talk on Zoom for Hedd was Chris Rea, head of strategic relationships, who related a survey of larger employers. Most of the biggest graduate recruiters are doing checks on applicants; but until every degree credential is checked, whether for a graduate to go into further study or employment, ‘the opportunity for fraud is going to be there as well’. He welcomed that Hedd was seeing an improvement in verification best practice; but so was the capacity for fraud, he added: “There’s a lot of work on our plates collectively.” That was a theme of the hour; that fake college and university documents are not just an issue for higher education, but for screening agencies and the employers who may hire through them.
For not only are screening firms seeing fake or exaggerated CVs, entire fake reference houses are (for a fee) making up documents, and AI is allowing that at scale and of high quality, Chris Rea said.
He quoted excuses why, employers say, they might not verify what an applicant says; that a degree is not relevant to a job advertised; or the check is too expensive, or too time-consuming; or, an employer might say ‘ I know we should’. In Hedd’s experience, Chris Rea went on, when an employer has been ‘burned’ by an applicant with a fraudulent degree, it becomes a matter of absolutely having to check. As he added, if education is important enough for a graduate to invest time and money and effort into, it’s important enough to check.
Diploma mills
He passed over to Michael Hilton, senior account director who reiterated that checking has got better in recent years; but, as he showed, AI is behind an ‘infrastructure’ of ‘diploma mills’ that affect every country. The UK gets targeted by such ‘mills’ because of the reputation of UK universities, among the world’s leaders. Hilton related the example of a ‘mill’ brought to Hedd’s attention by a UK university that was having its documents, transcripts and certificates sold online. The website was selling diplomas from 150 countries (from Algeria to the UAE). He mentioned America, France, and Australia and New Zealand as some of the places whose institutions’ educational qualifications are easier to verify. For some regions, it’s harder. Perhaps ten years ago, it was difficult for the fraudster to get the correct registrar’s signature and watermark on a document; now, if someone has posted such a document online, AI can use that to produce a ‘like for like’ that can be difficult for the naked eye to verify. A ‘mill’ may claim it’s only offering replacement that a buyer has lost; or that it’s selling novelties from made-up unis. In reality it’s selling qualifications for hundreds or thousands of dollars (and offering various ways to pay). Indeed, he showed how you can ask such a ‘mill’ for a 2:2 bachelor’s degree in a particular subject, and the website gave the price of $488. Once bought, those documents can assist in an application for a visa, or job. While in Hilton’s example Hedd notified the sector body Universities UK, and the Department for Education, and the Office for Students, and the UK police’s Action Fraud opened a report, he admitted that the website will trade again under a different name, eventually. He summed up: “It isn’t just a UK problem, it’s a global problem.”
Solutions
Hilton handed over to Jake Shumilin, product manager at Hedd. He set out how technology can make verification easier (and fraud harder). Verification, he said, is still very manual and an email-based process. Hence moves towards ‘digitally portable’ qualifications; and verification checks made against the same records that universities used, done in real time. He argued for authorised secure data exchange as the best defence against convincing AI-created fake documents – because AI can’t fake what’s on an ‘authoritative source’, a uni or sector body’s database. This does require collaboration, between countries and between universities, employers and screeners, because as Shumilin said, student information systems, screening platforms and employers’ workflows ‘all speak in slightly different languages’, and fraudsters exploit those gaps. Hence a trend towards consistent data standards; and methods of exchange; and a definition of what a verified credential means. Where verification is inconsistent, AI can step in he warned, and create ‘plausible imitations’. As he put it, a digital credential is only as trustworthy as the data in the system behind it. The prospect is of such a credential that’s portable (by the holder) and trustworthy. Australia and Canada have such things; the European union is piloting a digital credential ‘wallet’; however, the UK unfortunately does not have an equivalent.
Not only tech
As Shumilin went on, it’s not only a question of tech. Universities, employers and screening agencies should not assume that the others are doing all that’s needed; he described the verification of qualifications as ‘a shared risk space’, given that some 1.3m graduates enter the UK job market each year. Industry and professional bodies, he argued, should adopt minimum verification standards for their members. He pointed to a survey by the counter-fraud trade association Cifas, that found minorities admitted to lying about a degree to an employer; and to saying that exaggerating about your grades was reasonable.
About Hedd
Prospects Hedd offers a verification service, that checks degrees from a UK university. It’s part of Jisc, which offers cyber security and other IT services to UK higher education, such as a AI maturity toolkit, for Jisc members to look at their general AI use, responsibly. Visit www.jisc.ac.uk/innovation/artificial-intelligence. And www.hedd.ac.uk.
