Here's the link to the supposed letter supposedly confirming the supposed degree.
You tell me why:
Unfortunately, since knowing French and Spanish don't give me a good feel for Italian, I can't really translate the name of the degree. But, I can run it through a machine translator, and I have seen an Italian comment about it in a forum. As far as I can tell, "Dottore Magistrale in Filosofia" translates as "Master's Degree in Philosophy." Another glaring discrepancy is within the text of the letter itself (which my Spanish and French *do* allow me to understand): it says that the degree was awarded with a vote of 100 out of 100--but that's meaningless. If you read up on the Italian university system, you see that a jury of (IIRC) three faculty vote on whether a student has completed graduation requirements for the advanced degrees. So, what are the 100 votes? There is also an entrance exam to get into advanced degree programs; I believe it is graded on a scale of 100, but NO student ever seems to get above about 70 on it (the university publically posts scores). So, Rossi looked at various university procedural documents, put something together that sounded good (wow, 100 out of 100 votes is really impressive!), and passed it off as evidence that he attended university?
One impression I get from everything I have read about Rossi is that he's a gifted con man, but he's not really all that intelligent. He completely misses the details that would make his scam look genuine (for instance, having the font size consistent throughout the supposed degree letter). Well... maybe he deliberately leaves obvious discrepancies, because it gives him some kind of thrill to make his scam so obvious and still hoodwink people.
A question for you, though ~ why do some schools still issue Quarter Hours? Do you know how nutso that is? We went through this several times right down to using google translate and pulling up all the alternatives.
There are articles on the net about university degree titles in Italy that conform to what you see in any of the documents Rossi has displayed.
Give you a clue about "Master" when it comes to degree titles, I have one that says I am a Master Planner. It was issued by a well known School of Architecture in Virginia. The credit hour requirement is about double that of a Masters issued by the College of Arts and Sciences. Add in the project work and it's just this side of the sort of degree of difficulty you expect for a doctorate in many other fields.
You can't take A&S standards in the US and lay them down as a hard and fast guide for Engineering, Architecture, or Religion (the other traditional medieval fields of study).
In Italy it's worse because they invented a lot of this stuff centuries ago and then changed it.
For most of their degrees issued 35 years ago you'd ask for a letter of verification ~ rather like asking for a copy of a transcript here.
Now, your questions:
You tell me why: There are changes in font size throughout the letter.
Well, it's typed/printed on a letter head, so that gives you two different fonts right off the bat. The font selected looks like a proportional spaced Helvetica ~ which matches the letterhead font (but not exactly the same).
A non-right justified letter has variable spacing.
You are looking for a QUAD LEFT/QUAD RIGHT situation typically found in advertising or newspaper columns ~ where you have both proportional spacing and right and left justification. Variable spacing is commonly found in that sort of setup. I don't see anything unusual about that other than it can look tacky if you're used to the sort of columns you find in magazines and newspapers.
The date format changes throughout the letter.
The date following "Milano" spells out the month. This document was passed on to someone to sign who preferred to do it that way. It got dated in his office. Then he signed it. The other two dates were done at the same time albeit in slightly different size ~ and that may be an artifact of the scanner used to copy Rossi's original.
And why Rossi doesn't actually have a certificate of graduation instead of a fishy letter to show off.
Now, for the last question ~ the university would need to answer that. My brother and his wife didn't get their certificate of graduation (diploma) from Indiana University since their ceremony was bumped off the schedule by Communist sponsored antiwar riots. They got them more than 20 years later ~ and were still POd at the rioters.
If you know anybody who knows anyone who interfered in that graduation I know they would pay good money to watch that person skinned alive.