Bahrain students duped by online degree racket

Manama : Hundreds of students from Bahrain have fallen victim to an online fraud degree racket based in Pakistan.

Axact, a software company based in Karachi, has been reportedly targeting students in Bahrain. When contacted by DT News in the guise of a student, a representative form one of the fictitious universities belonging to Axact claimed that 1500 students from Bahrain have enrolled in their educational programmes.  The representative added that 20,000 students are enrolled from the Arab region. 

The company has over 145 websites for fictitious universities.

Some of the fictitious universities under Axact include Ashbery University, Belltown University, Camp Lake University and Brooksville University. The universities offer various programmes including diplomas, Bachelor’s degrees and Master’s degrees.

Thomas, a victim, said he paid BD1000 for a business diploma course but realised that the university was fake after completing the course. “I completed the course from their Brooksville University a few years ago and they provided me with course completion documents, but recently I started receiving calls from them asking for more money claiming that a few more documents were to be sent to me.” 

Thomas said that the calls came from a Bahraini local number and was probably a masked called ID. 

“I did not realize this until they made an error in a recent call saying that a representative from the Bahrain Foreign Affairs Ministry would contact me.”

“The same person from the University called me again using the Ministry’s number, that is when I doubted that they are using a caller ID spoofing software,” he told DT News. 

The university websites are top tire and the customer services are excellent which makes a false impression that they are legitimate universities, Thomas added.