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Fake Diplomas, Real Cash: Pakistani Company Axact Reaps Millions

And Qatar is somehow an example of media freedoms? Lmao! The Arab world is worse than Pakistan when it comes to media freedoms, so if that's the standard you want to set yourself, then that is pretty sad.
nope, i am just giving you a point of reference....if there was such a clout on Journalism & 'Free Speech' in Pakistan then stooges like Hamid Mir would not be breathing right now.....you would not be finding the Book authored by ' Saleem Shehzad' for whose murder you guys accuse the ISI of......who yes that was height of their incompetency that they picked up the guy killed him up, had his laptop in possession but forgot to check the Book....

The only one embarrassing yourself here is you, who does not know what procedural transparency is.

Anyways, Axact just got raided by FIA and had its employees detained as well as computers, documents seized. So I guess you and your buddies can shut up now about Declan Walsh's credibility.

FIA raids Axact offices, takes records and employees into custody - Pakistan - DAWN.COM
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lol so somehow being arrested and office being seized makes one guilty???
I suggest you to wait and watch, and save your self some embarrassment
 
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nope, i am just giving you a point of reference....if there was such a clout on Journalism & 'Free Speech' in Pakistan then stooges like Hamid Mir would not be breathing right now.....you would not be finding the Book authored by ' Saleem Shehzad' for whose murder you guys accuse the ISI of......who yes that was height of their incompetency that they picked up the guy killed him up, had his laptop in possession but forgot to check the Book....


WELL, they DID try to kill Hamid Mir if you jog your memory. And for every other benevolent acts of ISI you list with regards to them allowing journalists to breathe, books to be published, etc; I can give you several examples of actions to the contrary.

lol so somehow being arrested and office being seized makes one guilty???
I suggest you to wait and watch, and save your self some embarrassment


It means, the Pakistani authorities found the NYT article of a serious nature and credible enough to act on it. Yes, key word here 'credible'. If the Pakistani authorities agreed with you and your groupies here that Declan Walsh and NYT are not credible, no action would have been taken.

Here's another fun fact for you,

Excerpt,

Axact, as per the records of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), was registered on June 06, 2006 in Karachi. The company, according to SECP’s 2010 records (downloadable Excel sheet), had paid up capital, or fully-funded shares, of only Pakistani Rs. 6 million ($58,860).


The Pakistani man accused of making millions from fake degrees paid 26 cents in tax last year – Quartz

The CEO, Mr Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh paid only Rs 26 in income tax. Wow! This guy seems to be in competition with the likes of Nawaz Sharif and Zardari in a race to the bottom (Game of Let's See Who Pays the Least Tax).

The second “Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh” named in the list below, corresponds to the Computerized National Identity Card (CNIC) number 4230124802739. That number links back on Pakistan’s Online Taxpayer Verification website to an executive at Axact (see left).

screen-shot-2015-05-18-at-3-59-22-pm.png



Its high time now for you @balixd to quit defending someone so shady and suspicious (most likely a tax evader, fraudster, etc) and enter the stage where you leave this discussion with some face-saving statement.

More reading material for you to enlighten yourself

Axact chief executive paid Rs26 in income tax last year - The Express Tribune

More,

0-FBR-1432035056.png
 
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WELL, they DID try to kill Hamid Mir if you jog your memory. And for every other benevolent acts of ISI you list with regards to them allowing journalists to breathe, books to be published, etc; I can give you several examples of actions to the contrary.
If there is substantial proof available for that than am all here for punishing the culprit. But i dont see any evidence available for that....and as per the law you are actually wrongfully accusing someone of something they didnot do.......
And let me remind you you are crossing the line and entering the grey zone of Defaming the Armed Forces of Pakistan.....


It means, the Pakistani authorities found the NYT article of a serious nature and credible enough to act on it. Yes, key word here 'credible'. If the Pakistani authorities agreed with you and your groupies here that Declan Walsh and NYT are not credible, no action would have been taken.
it is not about credibility of the Newspaper that has force d the govt to probe the case but the news that is tarnishing the image of the Country worldwide......probing the matter regardless of the result is what matters....so Declan Walsh can shove it up his.........

Here's another fun fact for you,

Excerpt,




The Pakistani man accused of making millions from fake degrees paid 26 cents in tax last year – Quartz

The CEO, Mr Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh paid only Rs 26 in income tax. Wow! This guy seems to be in competition with the likes of Nawaz Sharif and Zardari in a race to the bottom (Game of Let's See Who Pays the Least Tax).



View attachment 223035


Its high time now for you @balixd to quit defending someone so shady and suspicious (most likely a tax evader, fraudster, etc) and enter the stage where you leave this discussion with some face-saving statement.

More reading material for you to enlighten yourself

Axact chief executive paid Rs26 in income tax last year - The Express Tribune

More,

View attachment 223043
And here is fun fact for you, its Innocent until proven guilty......
Nobody is here defending nd anyone, am merely presenting an opinion.
Unlike you who is being the judge, jury and the executioner......thats hypocrisy......
 
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If there is substantial proof available for that than am all here for punishing the culprit. But i dont see any evidence available for that....and as per the law you are actually wrongfully accusing someone of something they didnot do....... And let me remind you you are crossing the line and entering the grey zone of Defaming the Armed Forces of Pakistan.....


Oh yeah, 'defaming the Armed Forces of Pakistan', silly excuse used by military establishment and its fan boys to silence criticism and in many cases silence the critics too.


it is not about credibility of the Newspaper that has force d the govt to probe the case but the news that is tarnishing the image of the Country worldwide......probing the matter regardless of the result is what matters....so Declan Walsh can shove it up his.........


Wow! So you really just follow whatever public statements Pakistani politicians give and take them with closed eyes on their face value. What naivety! Just because Chaudhry Nisar says he has authorized FIA to investigate Axact because it 'tarnished the image of the country worldwide' doesn't mean anything. Its a silly public statement. If you watched senior Pakistani journalists discussing the Axact scandal, you would know that many are already saying that the Americans gave Pakistani authorities hard evidence before the NYT article was published and put pressure on Pakistan to take down Axact's illegal activities.


You continue to lose any and all self-respect by continuing to try to toss dirt on Declan Walsh who just broke the story of probably one of the biggest education related scandals in the entire world. Have some decency if you have no integrity, honesty, or anything else. As they say, don't shoot the messenger, try and deal with the message he delivered.


And here is fun fact for you, its Innocent until proven guilty......
Nobody is here defending nd anyone, am merely presenting an opinion.
Unlike you who is being the judge, jury and the executioner......thats hypocrisy......


It doesn't require a rocket scientist to see, 'If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck'.

Here is MORE glaring evidence of Axact's shady dealings, am just waiting to see how much evidence would it take to finally make you realize you are making a mockery out of yourself here; I know in Pakistan they don't teach people to accept one's mistakes and accept one's fault and say 'yes I was wrong'. Learn to do that, it will get you somewhere in this world by accepting when you're plain wrong about something.


Pakistan Probe: [Proof] Axact website and Fake University's websites are owned by Axact itself

Ok. Finally after some digging into Axact's business here is the proof that Axact is running all those fake sites.

"Free Insaaf" is Project by Axact started in 2012 and Free Insaaf official website Free Insaaf - A Project of SED Axact" have same registrar details in who.is like all other fake universities have see the details [Axact list of fake university and colleges registered under one registrar]

[Update 2015-05-19 05:45PM]
Same hosting server "hostinglance.com" is hosting hundred of these fake universities
[Update 2015-05-19 11:45 PM]
tracert of all "Axact" sites "Axact | World's Leading IT Company", "SED Axact - An Initiative for Society" and "BOL - A Complete Media Enterprise - TV Channels - Theatre - Movies - Radio - Publications" leads to same hosting server, details below

[Update 2015-05-18 10:33 PM] BOL - A Complete Media Enterprise - TV Channels - Theatre - Movies - Radio - Publications also have same registrar details

Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.8668569598
Registrant Postal Code: 70009
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: +1.5043550082

This is the screen shot of "Free Insaaf" site and it clearly says Project of Axact


and this is the who.is details of the Free Insaaf


Screen shot of fake high school "BuffVille"


and here is the Who.is details of the same school website



[Update: 2015-05-18 10:33PM]
BOL - A Complete Media Enterprise - TV Channels - Theatre - Movies - Radio - Publications is also have same registrar details



We have tried "tracert" command and these websites also leads to same hosting server

tracert details of "bolnetwrok"


"tracert" of buffvillehighschool.com


tracert of "Axact | World's Leading IT Company"



These all sites leads to same "HostingLance". It seems this hostinglance is also owned by Axact it self. If you browse this site it seems fake too. All static HTML pages for such a hosting company can't be true.

- See more at: Pakistan Probe: [Proof] Axact website and Fake University's websites are owned by Axact itself


Now @balixd , eat your words.
 
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Will the Real Alice K. Colbert Please Stand Up?
3k


The busy, busy lives of faculty and students in fake degree programs, as told through stock photos.
By L.V. Anderson and Mike Pesca


150519_EDU_YayEducation.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg

Alice K. Colbert aka Lance Redgrave aka young man showing thumbs up.
Photo by Edyta Pawlowska/Shutterstock

On Monday, the New York Times published a masterful exposé of Axact, the Pakistani company behind hundreds of sham diploma programs and online universities. “According to former insiders, company records and a detailed analysis of its websites, Axact’s main business has been to take the centuries-old scam of selling fake academic degrees and turn it into an Internet-era scheme on a global scale,” writes Times reporter Declan Walsh.

Walsh also published a list of more than 100 high school diploma programs, online universities, and accreditation bodies identified as Axact properties. Slate has reviewed several of these sites to find out more about the students and professors at the likes of Buffville High School, American Mideast University, and Fast Online University. Our findings are below.

The faculty at Western Advanced Central University is an ambitious bunch. George S. Kirkland, a permanent faculty member of the School of Business and Management, moonlights in the world of stock-photo modeling, where his alias is “middle-aged businessman in suit”; in addition to teaching, he’s also an active member of Johnsonton Community Parish Church.

150519_EDU_Stock-Kirkland.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg

Kirkland’s colleague Maria J. Fleck, of WACU’s School of Health Sciences—aka “woman standing in front of her colleagues (woman, mature, business)”—is most famous for also being an 82-year-old French woman who has never had any plastic surgery.

150519_EDU_Stock-Fleck.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg
 
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Over at Greenlake University, Dr. Tiara Dane, an associate professor of computer studies, is a woman of many talents (and nationalities): The “pretty businesswoman” is also a recruiter for the health care management company Global Medics in Ireland.

150519_EDU_Stock-Dane.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg

Dane’s ample accomplishments are apparently an inspiration to Greenlake University business school student Gracy Alen, who, while earning her MBA at Greenlake, is also pursuing a Master of Arts in communication at Spring Arbor University.

150519_EDU_Stock-Gracy.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg

Nelson Bay University boasts two professors named Alice K. Colbert—we bet they get each other’s emails all the time! The first Alice K. Colbert is a “[c]onfident young man” who goes by the alias Lance Redgrave, a “CEO/Founder” who is a client of dozens of online businesses, ranging from Web design firms to sporting goods stores. (If you ever need to find Alice aka Lance, go to Shutterstock and enter any of the following keywords: man, young, smiling, outdoors, urban, people, caucasian, guy, fun, day, male, arms crossed, one person, enjoying, carefree, confident, handsome, happiness, summer, standing, city, joy, happy.)

150519_EDU_Stock-Alices.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg

150519_EDU_Stock-Lance.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg

The other Alice K. Colbert is known to her friends as “beautiful happy brunette woman or businesswoman in her thirties talking on her cell phone.” She “brings more than two decades of teaching, management, and curriculum development” to her role at Nelson Bay University, which is impressive given her age. Even more impressive is that she moonlights as a representative of Clienttell, “a leading provider of automated patient appointment reminders in the healthcare service industry.” Where does she find the time?

150519_EDU_Stock-AliceTwo.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg

Hoping to find out more about the varied and jampacked résumés of Axact’s unusually attractive professors and students, we tried chatting online with representatives of several Axact schools but only got the message “Please wait for a site operator to respond” for several hours.

150519_EDU_Stock-HowMayIHelpYou.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg

We also tried calling two Axact schools with particularly excellent names—Ford Worth High School and Headway University—and were treated to the same groovy, relaxing hold music for about a minute at each number. Sadly, no one picked up.

Axact fake universities and diploma programs: A story in stock photos.
 
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The Opinion Pages | Editorial
A Rising Tide of Bogus Degrees
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD MAY 20, 2015


It is hard to believe that the Pakistani government was unaware of a major scam orchestrated by Axact, a software company based in Karachi that operates a global network of fake online schools that sell bogus diplomas. But ignorant or not, the government, which raided Axact’s offices on Tuesday, had little choice but to act after a report by Declan Walsh in The Times disclosed clear connections between Axact and at least 370 education websites, many of which claimed to represent online universities and high schools based in the United States. The scam had existed for years and reaped many millions of dollars.

The problem of bogus degrees and predatory schools goes well beyond one company in Pakistan. Still, the startling revelations that one outfit could cast such a wide net of duplicity give Congress and federal regulators the incentive they need to become much more aggressive at exposing fraudulent companies that pose as legitimate schools for the purpose of selling bogus degrees or luring people into costly but useless courses that lead nowhere.

According to The Times’s account, Axact’s bogus empire consists basically of the online descriptions of elegantly named and beautifully depicted schools with names that sound very much like those of respected American colleges — Columbiana, Barkley and Mount Lincoln.

This is, in fact, an elaborate online confection; behind these names there are no professors, no courses and no campuses that offer degrees with real accreditation. The sites added a further patina of legitimacy by referencing recruitment agencies, language schools, fake accreditation organizations.

Some customers are essentially complicit in the scam, reaching out to Axact for the express purpose of buying fake degrees. But people seeking a legitimate education have been seduced into enrolling in online courses that never materialized or cajoled into believing that their life experiences were sufficient to earn a diploma. In one instance, a woman who called to inquire about a high school diploma was surprised to receive a diploma in the mail after taking a 20-question test online.

The websites linked to Axact provide everything from high school diplomas for about $350, to doctoral degrees for $4,000 and above. Salesmen sometimes impersonate American government officials, then bully customers in buying forged or falsely acquired State Department certification documents for thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, the company has denied any wrongdoing.

Axact, however, is hardly the only actor in this arena. In their book titled “Degree Mills: The Billion-Dollar Industry That Has Sold Over a Million Fake Diplomas,” the former F.B.I. agent Allen Ezell and his co-author, John Bear, set forth staggering statistics about comparable or similar frauds.

They assert that there are 3,300 unrecognized universities worldwide, many of them selling degrees at all levels to anyone willing to pay the price, and that more than 50,000 Ph.D.s are purchased from diploma mills every year — slightly more than are legitimately earned. The fact that fake medical degrees seem particularly easy to come by raises obvious safety concerns.

Congress, which has paid only glancing attention to this problem, needs to focus on it in a sustained way. That means getting federal agencies to devise a coherent plan for curbing these kinds of abuses.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/20/opinion/a-rising-tide-of-bogus-degrees.html?_r=0





Unfortunately, this scam goes beyond the owners. Almost all employees were also involved in scamming & while they may have felt some pressure, they can't absolutely claim innocence.






Employees were berated, threatened if they did not meet targets: Former AXACT employee

Last Updated On 20 May,2015

LAHORE (Dunya News) – A former employee of AXACT corporation has claimed that employees at her workplace were berated and threatened if they did not meet their targets, reported Dunya News on Wednesday.

The former employee has claimed that leaving the organization after serving for some time is not easy.

She further claimed that if AXACT feared that a degree-deal would go astray, it would refund the customer and deduct the fee from the pay of the call agent.

The former employee has said that call agents would be berated and abused if they did not meet their monthly target while legal action used to be taken against any employee that dared to speak up against such practices.

She revealed that every employee at AXACT knew the dubious nature of the business that the company dealt in after training period of 3 weeks but could not back from the job as they felt that all doors had been closed on them.

Employees were berated, threatened if they did not meet targets: Former AXACT employee | Pakistan | Dunya News



Why I left Axact: The inside picture
By Kasim Osmani
Published: May 20, 2015

ISLAMABAD:
While Axact claims to be the world’s leading IT company as suggested by its slogan, most of its office floors (at least in Defence) are occupied with agents, who operate in the Middle East region luring Arab/international individuals with certified US degrees on the basis of their professional experiences.


These degrees range from Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD (Axact even prepares a thesis for you, if you don’t have enough time or skills!).

Agents are advised to use Bayt.com or LinkedIn as a source to find customers, who are in turn told that either of these organisations forwarded their profile for consultations.

As a matter of fact, while I was working at Axact, Bayt.com – the largest job search engine in Middle East – warned Axact not to use their name as a source. We were then advised to use LinkedIn or else manipulate the script somehow.

Axact agents tell customers the main reason why big corporations do not hire them is the absence of a degree that they can get while sitting at home.

The script read like: “You don’t have to take classes or listen to online lectures, or take pains for admissions and other documented procedures. Just log on to our university website and our Senior Academic Officer will enrol you. It takes less than five minutes and you receive internationally certified/attested degree within a couple of months solely based on your professional experience.”

Indeed, there is no criterion for professional experience of the applicant. You may even get a PhD degree with as minimum as one year of experience. It is all situational and manipulative. The only thing that matters is paying the enrolment fee, and then continuing to pay until your accounts are squeezed dry.

Once a customer pays the enrolment fee, he is in the trap. Now, senior agents (closers) would call him from time to time asking more and more money for attestations from embassies concerned and/or shipment charges.

It was quite an embarrassing and decisive day for me to quit Axact when a customer was probably fed up with paying extra attestation/registration fee. The senior agent asked him to wait for a moment so they could bring Mr ABC from the Egyptian embassy on a conference call to guide him further as to why that attestation was mandatory.


Indeed, there was no one from Egyptian embassy. Rather, it was one of senior Axact agents who spoke like native Arabs. He sat beside the agent who was already on phone and pretended to be talking from the embassy.
They ultimately got him to pay more for that attestation.

This is one out of hundreds of calls each day.

As for the universities that offer degrees on basis of professional experience, they all are virtual and have no physical address though they appear to be located in the US (and so do the agents tell the customers). According to the NYT report, these university websites are registered in Cyprus and Latvia.

The punch line for all this business is “a degree solely based on professional experience”. An idea that dates back to the end of World War II, when many retired soldiers were jobless and the US government issued special provisions allowing soldiers to obtain academic degrees on basis of their experience.

Whatever I have said above is, I say on oath, 100% true. I have tried to give a neutral inside picture and want the readers to decide whether it is legal or not. This is what has been going on at Axact for years.

I left Axact within a month of my joining the sales department. According to the agreement, we were bound not to disclose the nature of our job as people generally cannot understand it.

Today, all I want is proper investigations that can declare this creepy business as legal or illegal and take action accordingly since it is a matter of Pakistan’s reputation in the entire world and it is about education, the holiest of human professions.

Why I left Axact: The inside picture - The Express Tribune
 
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I like their creativity, so many foreign sounding names...and website.:p:
 
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Diploma mill scandal: Walsh releases Axact investigation documents - The Express Tribune

New York Times reporter Declan Walsh, whose expose uncovered Axact’s fake degree empire, has released documents pertaining to his investigations into the IT company’s dubious online college websites.

The documents were shared by Walsh using the online file sharing service Dropbox on Saturday. They include scans of registration documents for the mailboxes of Belford High School and Belford University in Texas and California, a copy of Axact’s internal publication, screen grabs from the school owner’s testimony, an image of the location listed as the address for the bogus International Accreditation Organisation and scans of an article in Arab News which linked Axact with fake degrees being sold abroad.

NYT-reporter-Declan-Walsh.jpg


Walsh also shared a guide to the documents he uploaded online.

According to the guide, disgruntled American students of Belford High School and Belford University brought a class-action lawsuit in an American court in 2009 which ended three years later with a $22.7 million judgment against the schools.

“During the hearings, a Karachi man named Salem Kureshi claimed to be the owner of the schools and denied any link to Axact,” Walsh wrote in the guide. “But registration documents for the schools’ mailboxes in Texas and California show that the schools’ mail was being forwarded to Axact’s Karachi headquarters,” he added.

Walsh said the Texas mailbox was opened by a man from Karachi named Syed Asim Hashmi, who was listed as a former Axact employee on page 19 of the IT company’s 2010 publication ‘Axactian’. The internal magazine came out four years after Hashmi opened the Texas mailbox.

4-Axact-address-copy.jpg


Screen grab from Google Maps of the address given by the bogus International Accreditation Organisation. PHOTO COURTESY: DECLAN WALSH

Meanwhile, the Arab News article, written by technology journalist Molouk Ba-Isa on October 6, 2009, identified Axact’s Karachi office as the source of fake degrees being posted abroad via Dubai. According to Walsh, the article was later pulled from the Internet following a legal threat from Axact’s lawyers, but never formally retracted.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 25th, 2015.

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Bottomline, Axact is a goner! BOL Network already seems to have folded
 
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Declan Walsh is more of a burnt tool ever since he was awarded persona non grata and kicked out of Pakistan. I'm not saying this is a false accusation, truth will come out. However this guy has been trying to get on somebodies nerves or something and NYT did lobby on his behalf by giving him space previously.
 
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Declan Walsh is more of a burnt tool ever since he was awarded persona non grata and kicked out of Pakistan. I'm not saying this is a false accusation, truth will come out. However this guy has been trying to get on somebodies nerves or something and NYT did lobby on his behalf by giving him space previously.


Looks like Declan Walsh just won the jackpot :)


Axact CEO Shoaib Ahmad Shaikh taken into custody - Pakistan - DAWN.COM


KARACHI: Axact CEO and centre of a massive fake degree fraud, Shoaib Ahmad Shaikh was taken into custody in the early hours of Wednesday from his office.

In the presence of officials from the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) as well as police, Shaikh was taken away in a white vehicle.

Sheikh and seven other directors will be produced before a banking court on Wednesday morning.

5564e2ab009cc.jpg

Shoaib Ahmad Shaikh talking to FIA director Shahid Hayat as reporters look on

The arrest came after an FIA raid on the Axact office on Khayaban-e-Ittehad, where officials said a large number of university degrees and student identification cards were recovered.

Also read: Editorial-Fake degree scandal

Shaikh had earlier requested the Sindh High Court to grant him protective bail against a ‘potential arrest’ in the fake degrees probe currently being undertaken by the FIA. However, his request was dismissed Monday, as the bench did not find any merit in his application.

The FIA has decided to file a case against Shaikh. According to FIA officials, Shaikh would formally be arrested after registeration of a first information report (FIR).

Last week, action against Axact kicked off after Nisar ordered an inquiry into the story published by The New York Times that claimed the company was issuing fake degrees as part of a massive, global scam.

Take a look: Nisar vows transparent investigation of Axact fake degree scam

The minister in his directive also said that the FIA was to determine whether the contents of the NYT story were true and whether the company was involved in any illegal business which may bring a "bad name" to Pakistan.

The detailed NYT report titled "Fake Diplomas, Real Cash: Pakistani Company Axact Reaps Millions" and written by New York Times Pakistan bureau chief Declan Walsh outlined how Axact — referred to as a "secretive Pakistani software company" — allegedly earned millions of dollars from scams involving fake degrees, non-existent online universities and manipulation of customers.

Know more: Damning NYT report uncovers Axact's fake degrees scam

According to the report, Axact created a series of fake websites involving “professors” and students who it said were in fact paid actors.

FIA officers swooped on the Karachi headquarters of the company last week, seizing equipment and records and expelling employees from the building.

The company's Rawalpindi office had also been sealed and employees questioned, an official said requesting anonymity.

The interior minister also assured that the ministry will not bear the pressure from any individual regarding the investigation of the Axact scandal and the investigation will be fair and transparent in this regard.

 
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