p2pnet.net News:- Four people said to have promoted and sold fake academic degrees by hijacking the IP addresses of more than 60 Pennsylvania businesses and one state government office are being sued by the state.

The case follows Pennsylvania’s largest investigation into the illegal transmission of thousands of spam messages.

Named are brothers Craig Barton Poe of Frisco, Texas and Alton Scott Poe of Saint Cloud, Florida; Trinity Southern University, Plano, Texas, and Innovative Cellular and Wireless Inc, Corpus Christi, Texas.

“TSU gives qualifying adults the opportunity to convert what is learned in life a college degree, whether that knowledge is from professional or other accomplishments, work, religious or military training, or other sources.” says the site.

“You may have qualifications now to earn a bachelors or masters degree by our assessment of your previous experience. Our evaluation and assessment may lead to the award of a degree!”

Alton Scott Poe is purportedly the Dean of Admissions and vice chancellor of TSU and Craig Barton Poe is the president of ICW, “which handles the billing and credit card processing for the sale of TSU academic degrees,” says the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office.

This January 2004, the defendants started promoting the sale of online academic degrees from Trinity Southern University, says a statement, going on:

“The website link that was included in the e-mails claimed that for a fee between $299 and $499 consumers can purchase a Bachelor’s, Master’s, Executive Master’s or Ph.D. degree in several fields including English, Business Administration and Biology.”

More than 300 spam-mails went out “without authorization” through the servers of more than 60 Pennsylvania businesses and the Pennsylvania State Senate and email had a fictitious sender’s name and web address.

“Investigators said consumers who received the unwanted spam may have complained to the unsuspecting sender electronically or telephoned the business identified in the ‘from’ line to speak directly to the person listed as the sender,” continmues the statement.

“The forged identification and routing information prevented consumers from tracing the spam back to the defendants. In addition, random words were inserted in the spam messages to confuse and bypass certain available spam filtering technology, according to the complaint. It’s possible that some companies first learned about the scam from consumers.”

The complaint also accuses the defendants of fraudulently claiming that Trinity Southern University:

• Is a legitimate institution that can issue academic undergraduate,graduate and doctoral degrees in several majors.
• Offers legitimate transcripts including a list of classes, grades and a final grade point average or GPA.
• Is accredited by Recoleta University in Argentina when no such university exists.
• Is privately accredited by NAPLAC.org when there is no organization by that name. In addition the address of the accreditation letter belongs to defendant Alton Scott Poe.
• Will verify information provided by consumers to be used in the evaluation process to grant degrees or to recommend that consumers are eligible for more advanced degrees.
• Will prosecute or revoke the degrees of those who withhold information or provide false information for admission and enrollment.

The Poe and other defendents violated Pennsylvania’s Unsolicited Telecommunication Advertisement Act and Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law, says the AG’s office.

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See:-
fake academic degrees – PA Private Industry IP Addresses Hijacked to Promote Scam, Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, December 6, 2004

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 7th, 2004 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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