What's the offense? Is it the selling that constitutes the crime? Or does the crime lie in the fact that only bogus degrees were sold?
Of course it's a fraud, you knew that when you sent in the check with "MBA Degree" written in the memo field! What you're buying is a frameable certificate. Anyone who looks at that and decides to let you work in their clinic or head up their accounting division is a fool and deserves whatever bad things follow.
It's a scam but such an obvious one. How does this differ from "buying a star" from international star registry? In both cases you spend an exorbitant sum of money to procure a nice parchment document to accompany your fantasy.
Read the article...it saves a lot of time and aggravation.
"Trinity Southern University in Texas, a cellular company and the two brothers who ran them are accused of misappropriating Internet addresses of the state Senate and more than 60 Pennsylvania businesses to sell fake degrees and prescription drugs by spam e-mail, according to the lawsuit.
"Prosecutors said more than 18,000 illegal e-mails were sent out this year with links to Trinity Southern's Web address, including 300 that appeared to originate from the Internet servers of Pennsylvania companies and institutions
"Among the alleged victims are Penn State University and the University of Pennsylvania, as well as numerous Internet service providers, businesses and technology companies."
In case it still isn't clear, this wasn't a simple scam to sell degrees. It's illegal drug sales, spamming, slamming, spoofing and hijacking. The PA AG sued in order to get the FBI involved. Since it's published news, the investigation is probably finished. Next up : charges, followed by other universities or politicos etc across the country stepping up with THEIR complaints, followed by indictments coinciding with arrests, followed by trials.