When a college degree comes from a “diploma mill,” it is not worth the price of the paper it is printed on. Yet that has not stopped the expansion of a network of unaccredited universities and fake agencies from siphoning tuition dollars from unsuspecting – or occasionally knowing – students.

A massive federal investigation shut down Saint Regis University in 2008 in the largest case of degree fraud in the United States. The bogus university functioned throughout the United States and other countries, selling more than 10,000 degrees to about 9,600 customers.