WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.720 JACK: Okay, we’re recording. So, I’m gonna call my dad ‘cause he’s going on 00:00:04.720 --> 00:00:13.379 about something in e-mails and I just have to clarify what in the world is happening. 00:00:13.379 --> 00:00:13.780 DAD: [PHONE RINGING] Hello? 00:00:13.780 --> 00:00:15.920 JACK: Hey, dad. How’s it going? 00:00:15.920 --> 00:00:17.500 DAD: Thought you were in DC. 00:00:17.500 --> 00:00:19.420 JACK: Oh, no, I’m back now. 00:00:19.420 --> 00:00:23.668 DAD: Oh, fantastic, fantastic. 00:00:23.668 --> 00:00:28.840 JACK: Yeah. Listen, I was trying to get — I couldn’t quite make it out — understand what 00:00:28.840 --> 00:00:33.426 it is you’re talking about in these e-mails, so I wanted to call you to get clarification. 00:00:33.426 --> 00:00:34.180 DAD: [LAUGHS] My e-mails. 00:00:34.180 --> 00:00:41.720 JACK: Yeah. So, you bought a TV in Mexico? Explain this story to me. 00:00:41.720 --> 00:00:44.824 DAD: I was in Mexico… 00:00:44.824 --> 00:00:44.835 JACK: Yeah? 00:00:44.835 --> 00:00:51.240 DAD: …and when I was ready to leave, two — I’ll say teenagers — saying, hey, do you want to buy 00:00:51.240 --> 00:01:01.120 a 75-inch television? I said, no. He said, well, it’s only $65. I said, $65? I said, open the box. 00:01:01.120 --> 00:01:06.840 I looked in; there was something in there. I said, for $65, you gotta carry it to my car, but yeah, 00:01:06.840 --> 00:01:12.000 yeah, yeah. So, they brought it to the car. I drove it home, I set it up in the living room, 00:01:12.000 --> 00:01:19.840 plugged it in. It was so clear and vibrant. Then I noticed that it was the menu for KFC. 00:01:19.840 --> 00:01:27.800 JACK: Like — so, it was like, you turned the screen — like, that’s the channel it was on? 00:01:27.800 --> 00:01:31.920 DAD: It wasn’t a TV; it was the menu from a KFC. 00:01:31.920 --> 00:01:38.800 JACK: Well, no — so, the — KFC has screens — has TVs that are menus. 00:01:38.800 --> 00:01:39.074 DAD: Yeah, yeah. 00:01:39.074 --> 00:01:42.720 JACK: The TV is a menu. So, you sure it wasn’t just on the…? 00:01:42.720 --> 00:01:43.600 DAD: No. 00:01:43.600 --> 00:01:44.820 JACK: What was it? 00:01:44.820 --> 00:01:53.120 DAD: No, it was just the drive-up menu for KFC. It wasn’t even a TV. 00:01:53.120 --> 00:02:01.640 JACK: Hold on a second. It was just a light with a plastic piece in front of it? 00:02:01.640 --> 00:02:09.200 DAD: Yeah, but it was very clear, vibrant. Chicken, three-piece, four-piece. Yeah. 00:02:09.200 --> 00:02:13.620 JACK: [LAUGHS] So, they stole the menu off the…? 00:02:13.620 --> 00:02:17.960 DAD: Yes, yes, exactly, exactly. It wasn’t a TV. 00:02:17.960 --> 00:02:21.994 But the good news is I put it on the street to get rid of it. 00:02:21.994 --> 00:02:26.740 JACK: Well, hold on. So, you put it on the street for the trash truck? 00:02:26.740 --> 00:02:31.200 DAD: No, for anybody to pick it up. Not the trash. Somebody might want it. 00:02:31.200 --> 00:02:33.300 JACK: Did you put a sign on it or something, like…? 00:02:33.300 --> 00:02:36.120 DAD: Well, it said ‘free’. Yeah, it said ‘free’, 00:02:36.120 --> 00:02:52.883 but it was on the street. Then the fourth day I put ‘for sale, $25’, and somebody stole it then. 00:02:52.883 --> 00:02:52.897 JACK: [LAUGHS] 00:02:52.897 --> 00:02:55.240 (INTRO): [INTRO MUSIC] These are true stories from the dark side of 00:02:55.240 --> 00:03:18.874 the internet. I’m Jack Rhysider. This is Darknet Diaries. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] 00:03:18.874 --> 00:03:19.680 JACK: Hey, how’s it going? 00:03:19.680 --> 00:03:22.560 FAZAL: Hello. Hello, Jack. It’s nice meeting you. 00:03:22.560 --> 00:03:25.600 JACK: Yeah. I’m excited to hear this story, but it sounds made-up. 00:03:25.600 --> 00:03:33.480 FAZAL: I know. It’s crazy, isn’t it? Listen; I don’t want my voice to be used, if it’s okay. 00:03:33.480 --> 00:03:40.800 JACK: Yeah, sure. Of course. I won’t use your voice. Okay, listen; come closer, come closer. 00:03:40.800 --> 00:03:48.800 This is a forbidden interview. The powers that be do not want this guy telling you his story, 00:03:48.800 --> 00:03:55.640 so I gotta do my part and keep him a secret. But I want to tell you this story so bad. So, 00:03:55.640 --> 00:04:00.640 what you heard there was a voice actor and he’s just gonna be reading the transcript for you of 00:04:00.640 --> 00:04:05.400 the interview I did with him. But the other thing is, I’ve gotta conceal this guy’s name, 00:04:05.400 --> 00:04:10.280 so we’re just gonna make up a name and call him Fazal. Meet Fazal. 00:04:10.280 --> 00:04:14.040 FAZAL: Okay, some background about me. [MUSIC] I am from Pakistan, 00:04:14.040 --> 00:04:17.320 actually. I worked in a call center for eight years. 00:04:17.320 --> 00:04:21.480 JACK: Fazal would answer the phones all day in a call center. He’d sit at a computer, 00:04:21.480 --> 00:04:26.680 put his headset on, and wait for a call. When one would come in, he’d see on the screen what 00:04:26.680 --> 00:04:31.080 company this person is calling about, and he would handle customer support for a handful 00:04:31.080 --> 00:04:35.760 of different companies. Customers would ask about their account or trouble with their service, and 00:04:35.760 --> 00:04:39.520 because he knew English and could speak clearly, he was pretty good at doing this call center work. 00:04:39.520 --> 00:04:43.800 FAZAL: There was a group of us. We were all friends working there. But we saw 00:04:43.800 --> 00:04:48.720 this other company had a whole bunch of openings for call center employees, Axact. 00:04:48.720 --> 00:04:57.920 JACK: Axact’s website says they’re a leader in IT globally, and it looks like it’s a very impressive 00:04:57.920 --> 00:05:01.146 company. I mean, they’ve got a recruitment video. Here, let’s take a listen to this. 00:05:01.146 --> 00:05:04.280 HOST: [MUSIC] Axact is one of the few organizations nationwide that has a 00:05:04.280 --> 00:05:09.480 well-defined leadership development program and structured career paths. Each and every 00:05:09.480 --> 00:05:14.840 employer at Axact is enabled to travel that path to reach the highest level in the organization. 00:05:14.840 --> 00:05:20.440 FAZAL: They had tall buildings all over; Karachi, Islamabad, Lahul, and you know, they had one of 00:05:20.440 --> 00:05:26.840 the biggest transport fleets as well. So, they were big, and we were excited. They were like, 00:05:26.840 --> 00:05:35.866 good money and opportunity. We were tired of our call center anyway. So, it was time. 00:05:35.866 --> 00:05:39.040 JACK: [MUSIC] A whole group of them applied to work at Axact, 00:05:39.040 --> 00:05:42.040 and they all got the job. It was a much better place than where they 00:05:42.040 --> 00:05:46.460 were used to. They were in a six-story building and the pay was much better. 00:05:46.460 --> 00:05:52.280 FAZAL: We started working in their main hub in Karachi. Now, the way this call center 00:05:52.280 --> 00:05:59.040 would work is we would do customer support for whatever client we’d have. My first client was 00:05:59.040 --> 00:06:04.780 a university in Manchester, England, and this was a little different than what I was used to. 00:06:04.780 --> 00:06:09.080 JACK: He was answering calls, helping students out with the stuff they needed, 00:06:09.080 --> 00:06:15.160 but it was also commission-based. Basically, he’d be sitting around waiting for a phone to ring, 00:06:15.160 --> 00:06:20.200 and if somebody were to call and ask about a program at the school, he was supposed to try 00:06:20.200 --> 00:06:25.800 to get them to sign up for classes. If he could, he’d get some extra money from making the sale. 00:06:25.800 --> 00:06:32.040 FAZAL: But the commission was very small, and not many people would even call that 00:06:32.040 --> 00:06:39.040 were interested. So, the pay for this university was not very good. [MUSIC] But inside this call 00:06:39.040 --> 00:06:45.040 center was a leaderboard. In fact, it would show you this leaderboard every time you logged into 00:06:45.040 --> 00:06:51.960 the computer. You could see how much money everyone in the call center was making, 00:06:51.960 --> 00:06:58.680 and some people were making fairly great money, like insane amounts, hundreds of thousands. You 00:06:58.680 --> 00:07:04.920 could see who their customers were; other universities. They were very possessive 00:07:04.920 --> 00:07:13.120 of their clients. Like, one day, another team was very busy and one of the calls rolled over to me, 00:07:13.120 --> 00:07:19.120 and that was for their university. I answered it and immediately someone came running over to 00:07:19.120 --> 00:07:24.400 me and said, no, no, no, transfer that call to me. We have this handled. So, 00:07:24.400 --> 00:07:29.320 I never got a chance to get any good sales from other universities. 00:07:29.320 --> 00:07:33.480 JACK: Fazal talked to his boss and was like, how come these other teams are making so much more 00:07:33.480 --> 00:07:39.560 money than I am, and is there a way I can get a better client or something? So, his boss says, 00:07:39.560 --> 00:07:46.200 you know what? There is something here. We have a brand-new client. It just came on board, 00:07:46.200 --> 00:07:55.960 and they’re called Bay View. No, Bayville. Bay City University. Yeah, Bay City University. 00:07:55.960 --> 00:08:00.560 That sounds good. They’re the same kind of thing that you’ve been doing. You gotta help students 00:08:00.560 --> 00:08:05.440 with their online classes, but you can also earn some commissions and there’s some big potential 00:08:05.440 --> 00:08:11.440 here. Are you interested? Fazal’s like, alright, sure. So, they brought him over to this account, 00:08:11.440 --> 00:08:16.360 Bay City University. No, Bay Town University. Yeah, that sounds better. 00:08:16.360 --> 00:08:18.600 FAZAL: They assigned this account to our whole 00:08:18.600 --> 00:08:24.400 group. It was strange. [MUSIC] A few people on our team were webmasters, 00:08:24.400 --> 00:08:31.140 developers. A few were marketers. Then, the rest of us were call center workers. 00:08:31.140 --> 00:08:40.760 JACK: The webmasters got to work at creating the university’s website, baytownuniversity.com. It 00:08:40.760 --> 00:08:46.360 said they’ve got scholarships, a robust alumni network, student aid, and the school was ranked 00:08:46.360 --> 00:08:51.420 number four in the country. Come take classes and get a great career at Bay Town University. 00:08:51.420 --> 00:08:57.680 FAZAL: They made this website in a couple of days. It looked really good. It looked just as good as 00:08:57.680 --> 00:09:03.560 any other fancy university out there. It had a list of courses you could take, a whole portal 00:09:03.560 --> 00:09:10.040 for students to log in and take classes remotely, even. In fact, we had to do training so they could 00:09:10.040 --> 00:09:16.800 show us how to help students take their online courses. They set up courses using Canvas, which 00:09:16.800 --> 00:09:23.040 a lot of schools use Canvas, actually. But they showed us how to help students take their classes. 00:09:23.040 --> 00:09:27.920 JACK: It took a couple of weeks to fully integrate this university and get everyone trained up on 00:09:27.920 --> 00:09:34.880 it. Then Fazal started getting e-mails and calls from students interested in signing up. Basically, 00:09:34.880 --> 00:09:40.520 people were asking about classes there, and Fazal had to try to get them to enroll. If he could, 00:09:40.520 --> 00:09:45.680 he’d get a commission. Hi, can you tell me about your teaching degree? You called at the 00:09:45.680 --> 00:09:49.880 perfect time. Yes, of course I can. We have one of the best schools in the country. Our 00:09:49.880 --> 00:09:53.800 professors all come from the highest-rated universities, and our students typically go 00:09:53.800 --> 00:09:57.840 on to make great money after getting their degree. We also have an accelerated program 00:09:57.840 --> 00:10:02.160 where you can earn your degree fairly quickly. Oh, and did I mention that because we’re online, 00:10:02.160 --> 00:10:05.160 we’re one of the cheapest schools around? The sooner we can get you enrolled, 00:10:05.160 --> 00:10:09.400 the sooner we can get your degree. Our next classes are starting up in two days. If we 00:10:09.400 --> 00:10:13.200 can get you signed up in the next twenty-four hours, we can get you rolled in this semester’s 00:10:13.200 --> 00:10:20.080 classes. Are you ready to get started? But Fazal was looking at this website and checked into it, 00:10:20.080 --> 00:10:26.920 and the school did not exist last month. This university is brand new. There are no reviews 00:10:26.920 --> 00:10:32.640 about it or people talking about it. He looked at the address; it was a US address. He typed 00:10:32.640 --> 00:10:39.200 that into Google Maps, and there’s no building there. He was realizing this school doesn’t exist. 00:10:39.200 --> 00:10:45.880 FAZAL: This was something that Axact created from thin air. There was no real university. There was 00:10:45.880 --> 00:10:52.080 no learning, no classes, nothing. We were taking people’s money and giving them fake degrees. 00:10:52.080 --> 00:10:54.000 JACK: Did they know it was fake? 00:10:54.000 --> 00:11:00.120 FAZAL: Maybe not at first, since we had only a few classes you could take a semester. So, 00:11:00.120 --> 00:11:05.400 to them it might have felt like they were cheating us, because here’s the thing; 00:11:05.400 --> 00:11:10.880 when you go on Canvas to take the course, you can just hit ‘next’ on every lesson to finish 00:11:10.880 --> 00:11:17.760 the whole course in minutes. So, they’d get done with all their courses in like, twenty minutes for 00:11:17.760 --> 00:11:23.420 the semester, and feel like we’re the suckers for not making them go through the course properly. 00:11:23.420 --> 00:11:28.000 JACK: Ooh, that’s an interesting psychological trick, huh, to set 00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:31.760 up the classes in a way that you could easily skip through the material and just finish the 00:11:31.760 --> 00:11:37.120 whole course in a couple minutes. This made it seem like the students were the cheaters here, 00:11:37.120 --> 00:11:42.120 not the school, which kinda brings them in on the scam even more, you know, 00:11:42.120 --> 00:11:50.000 to make it feel like they’re the ones scamming the school, almost. The web team did great work 00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:53.960 at building this university’s website. [MUSIC] They listed a bunch of accrediting bodies, 00:11:53.960 --> 00:11:58.560 and if you go on the accrediting bodies’ websites, you see this school is approved. 00:11:58.560 --> 00:12:04.160 But the accrediting bodies were all made up, too. They even went so far as to put on the website 00:12:04.160 --> 00:12:09.900 that the school is endorsed by Senator John Kerry, even though John Kerry never actually endorsed it. 00:12:09.900 --> 00:12:16.880 FAZAL: They even made us fake personas on LinkedIn which looked like we worked at this university. 00:12:16.880 --> 00:12:22.600 So, if you looked up the university on LinkedIn, you’d see all these employees there, and faculty. 00:12:22.600 --> 00:12:31.400 JACK: Now, this school website, besides it being a scam, had another dark side to it. Here, 00:12:31.400 --> 00:12:35.520 check this out. So, if a potential student was interested in going to school here, they could 00:12:35.520 --> 00:12:40.200 ask for more information about classes on the website or whatever. But to do that, the website 00:12:40.200 --> 00:12:47.280 would make the potential student create an account on the school website. They’d create an account on 00:12:47.280 --> 00:12:51.600 the site, and it would ask you for things like your Facebook profile, your Twitter profile, 00:12:51.600 --> 00:12:55.760 your LinkedIn profile. I mean, this isn’t so much of a stretch to ask, right? I mean, 00:12:55.760 --> 00:13:00.680 I’ve probably been on dozens of sites that have asked me for my social media profiles, too. But 00:13:00.680 --> 00:13:07.660 then all this information is wrapped up and given to Fazal to try to follow up and make the sale. 00:13:07.660 --> 00:13:14.060 FAZAL: I don’t think you understand. All of it was given to me, all their information. 00:13:14.060 --> 00:13:16.600 JACK: Yeah, okay, then explain. What do you mean? 00:13:16.600 --> 00:13:20.440 FAZAL: So, when they had to make an account on this fake school site, 00:13:20.440 --> 00:13:25.800 they had to enter in an e-mail address for the username and make a password. Well, 00:13:25.800 --> 00:13:30.120 that password was stored in clear text and given to me. 00:13:30.120 --> 00:13:33.060 JACK: Oh, I see. That is creepy. 00:13:33.060 --> 00:13:40.200 FAZAL: Yeah, I thought the same; kind of creepy. But it’s far worse than that. I 00:13:40.200 --> 00:13:46.480 was talking with someone from another team and they said, go to facebook.com and try to log 00:13:46.480 --> 00:13:52.420 in with this e-mail and password. We were able to log in to these people’s Facebook accounts. 00:13:52.420 --> 00:13:58.280 JACK: Holy cow. That’s not creepy; that’s awful. So, when you put your password into 00:13:58.280 --> 00:14:02.960 this school’s website, they would just hand that password right to Fazal so he could do 00:14:02.960 --> 00:14:08.240 whatever he wanted with it. This is a really good reminder that when we log in somewhere, 00:14:08.240 --> 00:14:15.320 anywhere, we’re giving our password to the app or the website. I mean, we trust that they 00:14:15.320 --> 00:14:20.920 aren’t looking at our password or storing it in clear text. We trust that they’re hashing it or 00:14:20.920 --> 00:14:26.680 encrypting it so they can’t see it even if they wanted. But here’s a clear example of what could 00:14:26.680 --> 00:14:35.960 go wrong if we trust a website too much. Axact employees could see the users’ passwords and 00:14:35.960 --> 00:14:41.840 try using those passwords on their social media accounts to see if they reused the password there, 00:14:41.840 --> 00:14:50.360 and they would sometimes be able to log into Facebook or LinkedIn or even their e-mail inboxes. 00:14:50.360 --> 00:14:57.080 FAZAL: The website had some kind of tracker on the user. I’m not sure how it worked, 00:14:57.080 --> 00:15:03.280 but if I were on the phone with them, I can see everything they’re clicking and hovering over. 00:15:03.280 --> 00:15:10.300 JACK: Okay, but why are Axact employees even logging into people’s Facebook accounts at all? 00:15:10.300 --> 00:15:16.800 FAZAL: Because what we were doing was building a profile on every new student. The more information 00:15:16.800 --> 00:15:22.400 we know about them, the easier it is to sell them on the degree. So, once we learned a lot 00:15:22.400 --> 00:15:27.640 of details about them, we’d call them and say, I’m not sure if you’re interested in a business 00:15:27.640 --> 00:15:34.240 degree, but we have a big sale on them right now. We knew very well that’s exactly what they wanted. 00:15:34.240 --> 00:15:38.680 JACK: Dang, dude, this is the bunk. That’s what this is. Fake university 00:15:38.680 --> 00:15:43.660 hacking into students accounts, and faked degrees? It’s a scam. It’s a big, big scam. 00:15:43.660 --> 00:15:49.680 FAZAL: We haven’t even got to step one yet. We also had a lead-generation team, 00:15:49.680 --> 00:15:55.640 or maybe ‘marketing team’ it’s called, who would find potential students. What they 00:15:55.640 --> 00:16:03.000 did was made it so that if anyone posted their resume on monster.com or indeed.com, 00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:08.640 the marketing team would pick that resume up and look at it to see if they would benefit 00:16:08.640 --> 00:16:13.520 from a degree from our university. I don’t know how they were able to 00:16:13.520 --> 00:16:19.260 immediately see everyone’s resumes, but we were sent a lot of resumes. 00:16:19.260 --> 00:16:22.060 JACK: Okay, and what would you do with that? 00:16:22.060 --> 00:16:27.520 FAZAL: We’d then research that person, look for their social media profiles, 00:16:27.520 --> 00:16:31.880 try to find out their goals and ambitions, get to know them, 00:16:31.880 --> 00:16:37.080 then e-mail or call them and say something like, hey, I know you’re struggling to find 00:16:37.080 --> 00:16:42.980 work. I want to help you with that. Of course, I’d try to get them to enroll. 00:16:42.980 --> 00:16:47.560 JACK: Oh man, you know what? I’ve made accounts on these career websites before, 00:16:47.560 --> 00:16:51.360 and yeah, it seems like the moment you apply for a job or post your resume, 00:16:51.360 --> 00:16:56.400 you instantly get flooded with e-mails about jobs you’re seeking, and it’s extremely hard to 00:16:56.400 --> 00:17:00.920 un-stick yourself from this relentless barrage of job opportunities. It’s almost like these 00:17:00.920 --> 00:17:05.760 sites have an active data breach or are selling your data as soon as you give it to them. Once, 00:17:05.760 --> 00:17:11.480 I applied for a job in 2008 on one of these job recruitment sites, and I’m still getting e-mails 00:17:11.480 --> 00:17:18.145 from people today saying they found the perfect job for me. Alright, are we at step one yet, or…? 00:17:18.145 --> 00:17:24.200 FAZAL: [MUSIC] Yeah, yeah. Okay, step one. We want the student to enroll, yeah? So, 00:17:24.200 --> 00:17:30.314 we offer them a cheap introductory rate, a few courses, maybe a few hundred dollars. 00:17:30.314 --> 00:17:33.240 JACK: Where are these students typically in the world? Are they in Pakistan? 00:17:33.240 --> 00:17:41.480 FAZAL: No, no, no. I never saw any Pakistani students. We mostly targeted US, UK, 00:17:41.480 --> 00:17:47.800 some of Europe, and a lot in the Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and, you know, 00:17:47.800 --> 00:17:54.160 Dubai, UAE, because a lot of people there, money was not a factor for them. 00:17:54.160 --> 00:17:57.560 JACK: Didn’t any of this feel wrong? Were 00:17:57.560 --> 00:18:00.960 you maybe thinking twice about giving someone a fake degree? 00:18:00.960 --> 00:18:06.520 FAZAL: It wasn’t just degrees. There were certifications we were offering, 00:18:06.520 --> 00:18:16.440 and high school diplomas, too. But yeah, I did feel like this wasn’t right, but Axact charmed me 00:18:16.440 --> 00:18:24.960 to get me to not care. It was really weird. Let me tell you. You ever see how Google’s offices are? 00:18:24.960 --> 00:18:31.800 JACK: Yeah, I did go to a Google office once, and I remember they had free food for the employees, 00:18:31.800 --> 00:18:36.760 there were free rides to work, there was a place you can get your hair cut in the 00:18:36.760 --> 00:18:39.440 parking lot. They were giving car washes in the parking lot. 00:18:39.440 --> 00:18:44.760 FAZAL: Yeah, we had all that too, but like, a hundred times more than what Google gives their 00:18:44.760 --> 00:18:52.720 employees. It was nuts. To begin with, Axact offices had a kitchen with chefs to make you 00:18:52.720 --> 00:18:59.480 anything you wanted, free, of course. But they also partnered with the best restaurants in town. 00:18:59.480 --> 00:19:04.840 So, you could go to an internal website, order food from any of these restaurants, 00:19:04.840 --> 00:19:11.960 and they’d bring you the food right to your desk. And not just like in a paper sack; whatever food 00:19:11.960 --> 00:19:20.600 they brought you, it was always done with a touch of class, served by a butler on a nice metal tray. 00:19:20.600 --> 00:19:27.240 They would come collect the dishes from you and bring you any drink you asked for. So, our food 00:19:27.240 --> 00:19:34.280 was taken care of while you were at work, but our food was taken care of at home, too. In fact, 00:19:34.280 --> 00:19:40.840 they didn’t want you to fuss with anything outside the office. If you needed groceries, 00:19:40.840 --> 00:19:46.640 just tell them what you want and someone will deliver it to your home. If your wife needed to 00:19:46.640 --> 00:19:53.240 see the doctor, someone would go to your house and pick her up and take her to the doctor, 00:19:53.240 --> 00:19:59.720 wait there with her, and drive her home. In fact, they gave us two company cars that we 00:19:59.720 --> 00:20:04.880 could use however we wanted, and they would get you anything you asked for; 00:20:04.880 --> 00:20:11.380 ticket for a concert or a cricket match. They’d get it for you and even drive you there. 00:20:11.380 --> 00:20:15.960 JACK: What was the craziest thing you saw that they offered? 00:20:15.960 --> 00:20:20.520 FAZAL: Oh, they had a yacht you could use, and let me tell you, 00:20:20.520 --> 00:20:27.080 in a country like Pakistan, this was extremely rare to be able to have access to a yacht. They 00:20:27.080 --> 00:20:31.540 didn’t seem to care at expenses when it came to taking care of their employees. 00:20:31.540 --> 00:20:36.545 JACK: Dang, man. This sounds like a great place to work. Now I want to go work at Axact. 00:20:36.545 --> 00:20:44.400 FAZAL: [MUSIC] No, no, no, because they have you work every day, twenty-nine days a month. That’s 00:20:44.400 --> 00:20:50.720 what they required you to do. You get one day off a month, and no matter what you think you 00:20:50.720 --> 00:20:56.440 need to do, like take your kids somewhere or give your mother a birthday gift, they do it 00:20:56.440 --> 00:21:03.240 all for you so you could really focus only on work, and that’s all they wanted you to do, 00:21:03.240 --> 00:21:09.660 just work all the time. With students all over the world, you would always be busy. 00:21:09.660 --> 00:21:11.540 JACK: So, did they pay you well? 00:21:11.540 --> 00:21:16.720 FAZAL: The pay wasn’t really that good. The commission was 1%, 00:21:16.720 --> 00:21:23.920 so if you got someone to enroll and they paid $300, you’d get $3. But because 00:21:23.920 --> 00:21:29.920 everything in your life is taken care of, it felt like we were living very well. 00:21:29.920 --> 00:21:33.600 JACK: Alright, so, you told me step one. Are there more steps to this? 00:21:33.600 --> 00:21:40.240 FAZAL: Yes. Okay, step two. So, you know once you get them enrolled, 00:21:40.240 --> 00:21:46.000 they might be in a one or two-year program to earn their degree. New courses are released 00:21:46.000 --> 00:21:53.200 every few months for them to finish. But now that they’re enrolled, I can call them up and say, hey, 00:21:53.200 --> 00:21:58.560 listen, I know you’re really itching to get done with school. I think I can talk to the 00:21:58.560 --> 00:22:04.600 dean and get more classes opened up earlier. Is that something you’re interested in? Okay, 00:22:04.600 --> 00:22:10.840 but listen, what I’m going to be doing isn’t easy. The dean doesn’t like me doing this, 00:22:10.840 --> 00:22:17.760 and I need a good reason to do it. So, if I can expedite your classes so you can just take all the 00:22:17.760 --> 00:22:24.880 classes you need now instead of waiting two years, would you be willing to pay $3,000 for that? 00:22:24.880 --> 00:22:32.480 [MUSIC] Yeah. A lot of them were happy to hear they could finish their degree in just a week. 00:22:32.480 --> 00:22:38.100 JACK: I mean, at this point they had to know that this is not a real school or a real degree, right? 00:22:38.100 --> 00:22:45.000 FAZAL: Well, see, the school website looked real. Like, it had accreditations listed. The 00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:50.000 website was approved by Secretary of State, John Kerry, you know? When the US State 00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:56.320 Department says this is an accredited school, you believe it, even though his signature was 00:22:56.320 --> 00:23:02.080 fake and he didn’t actually approve it. But yeah, I think some of them did know, 00:23:02.080 --> 00:23:09.160 and they didn’t care. They’d already paid a little and were convinced it was a real school, 00:23:09.160 --> 00:23:16.400 at least at the beginning. So, if they felt it was real, then maybe they thought they could get away 00:23:16.400 --> 00:23:23.520 with it. They liked it that it seemed so real, so they could believe it and feel good about it. So, 00:23:23.520 --> 00:23:29.080 when we’d send them the certificate or degree, we made it all exciting and congratulatory for them, 00:23:29.080 --> 00:23:34.400 even sent them a gown and graduation hat and asked them to take a picture of them wearing it, 00:23:34.400 --> 00:23:39.600 holding up the certification so we can put it on our website, and they would. 00:23:39.600 --> 00:23:45.280 JACK: So, okay, what kind of degrees are we talking about here? 00:23:45.280 --> 00:23:50.600 FAZAL: They had civil engineering degrees, aeronautical degrees, teaching degrees, 00:23:50.600 --> 00:23:56.080 you know, English language certificates, law degrees, and a lot of high school diplomas. 00:23:56.080 --> 00:24:03.160 But we never did fake medical degrees. That was always off limits because someone could get hurt. 00:24:03.160 --> 00:24:07.880 JACK: Now, while Fazal told me they never sold fake medical degrees, 00:24:07.880 --> 00:24:12.640 I did find some evidence that nurses and psychiatrists were buying degrees 00:24:12.640 --> 00:24:17.960 from this company. I mean, listen to this; this is the CBC News out there in Canada, 00:24:17.960 --> 00:24:20.840 and they track someone down using a fake degree they got from Axact. 00:24:20.840 --> 00:24:25.360 HOST2: We’re starting our investigation with counselors treating serious medical 00:24:25.360 --> 00:24:33.520 conditions with fake degrees. First up, meet Alfred Ojo. He treats ADHD, 00:24:33.520 --> 00:24:39.940 anger management, depression, PTSD. The list goes on. You have a lot of certificates. 00:24:39.940 --> 00:24:44.960 JACK: Oh, and speaking of news stories, what is going on here? Listen to this. 00:24:44.960 --> 00:24:51.440 HOST3: [inaudible] says it is concerned by the report that nearly a third of Pakistan’s civil 00:24:51.440 --> 00:24:57.000 pilots have been flying using what’s called fake licenses. [inaudible] is 00:24:57.000 --> 00:25:01.600 calling it a serious lapse in oversight. Pakistan International Airlines said it 00:25:01.600 --> 00:25:06.640 has grounded about 150 pilots and says the problem is industry-wide. 00:25:06.640 --> 00:25:13.320 FAZAL: Yeah, I saw that news story, too. It’s unrelated to what we were doing. We did not sell 00:25:13.320 --> 00:25:20.520 pilot’s licenses, and that story was in Pakistan. Like I said, I never saw any Pakistanis enrolling 00:25:20.520 --> 00:25:27.120 in these universities. By the way, once we had one university going good and rolling, 00:25:27.120 --> 00:25:33.200 they would stand up another new university a few months later, because after a while, 00:25:33.200 --> 00:25:39.240 these things would be discovered as fake and we’d have to start all over. So, it was just good 00:25:39.240 --> 00:25:45.520 practice to always be building new universities, and they kept giving us new ones to control. 00:25:45.520 --> 00:25:49.280 JACK: We’re gonna take an ad break here, but stay with us. There’s more steps that 00:25:49.280 --> 00:25:56.080 Fazal is gonna tell us about, and I’m really curious to see who’s behind this whole thing. 00:25:56.080 --> 00:26:01.040 There was one university that was created out of thin air called Newford University, 00:26:01.040 --> 00:26:05.660 and they had a whole promotional video. [MUSIC] Here, this is the head of the university talking. 00:26:05.660 --> 00:26:12.440 DANI: My name is Dani Crane, and I serve as an HOD at Newford University. NU is an 00:26:12.440 --> 00:26:17.440 institution that prides itself on excellence, and as such, we strive to continually improve 00:26:17.440 --> 00:26:22.400 ourselves. Come be a part of Newford University to soar the sky of excellence. 00:26:22.400 --> 00:26:27.600 JACK: Here’s another one from Drewmont University, a fake university created by Axact. 00:26:27.600 --> 00:26:32.880 HOST4: Drumount was an awesome experience for me. I was able to earn my PhD in leadership 00:26:32.880 --> 00:26:38.160 and education administration. I had the best advisor and was able to acquire a 00:26:38.160 --> 00:26:42.560 lot of experience in the education administration field. I’m finishing 00:26:42.560 --> 00:26:47.040 my PhD at Drumount University, and I expect to graduate this fall. 00:26:47.040 --> 00:26:51.640 FAZAL: We had this team of sales agents, but the other people on the 00:26:51.640 --> 00:26:56.200 team would pose as people who worked at the school. So, if you wanted to 00:26:56.200 --> 00:27:02.120 speak to the dean or administrations department or professor or counsellor, 00:27:02.120 --> 00:27:07.120 we had it all set up to be able to have these roles you can talk to, anyone you like. 00:27:07.120 --> 00:27:12.480 JACK: Okay, I think it’s pretty shady to not only lie to your customers to make them think that this 00:27:12.480 --> 00:27:19.560 school is real, but to also pose as a teacher and act like an expert in your field and give students 00:27:19.560 --> 00:27:25.400 a bad education? It’s one thing just to sell them a fake degree, but it’s a whole ‘nother thing to 00:27:25.400 --> 00:27:30.800 give them a false sense of knowledge of anything. I just think that’s a pretty dirty trick. The 00:27:30.800 --> 00:27:35.160 marketing team was pretty good at drumming up new victims for this scam. They would spend 00:27:35.160 --> 00:27:40.840 a lot of money on Google ads, hyper-targeting certain degrees and regions, scraping resumes 00:27:40.840 --> 00:27:45.600 off job sites, targeting people on social media, and running SEO campaigns to get their school 00:27:45.600 --> 00:27:50.400 ranked higher in the search results. How much do you think this company was making from all this? 00:27:50.400 --> 00:27:56.920 FAZAL: Right. Our team had a goal of $2.4 million a month, and there were 00:27:56.920 --> 00:28:03.560 twenty-three teams in the company. You could see the leaderboard and how well each team is doing. 00:28:03.560 --> 00:28:09.920 JACK: Alright, so, you told me step one and step two. Are there more steps to this? I just imagine 00:28:09.920 --> 00:28:15.340 you could just keep rinsing and repeating; start over, take that victim, sell them another degree. 00:28:15.340 --> 00:28:23.500 FAZAL: There are more steps, yes, but here’s where it gets weird and you lose track of your steps. 00:28:23.500 --> 00:28:30.200 [MUSIC] So, let’s say I had someone pay extra to get their degree quickly and we send them the 00:28:30.200 --> 00:28:36.360 degree. Well, we could go in a lot of different directions from here. One might be to call them 00:28:36.360 --> 00:28:41.800 up and say there’s been a mistake in their degree. You could just make up whatever you wanted at this 00:28:41.800 --> 00:28:47.720 point. You might say, sorry to inform you, but there’s been an error. You didn’t take all the 00:28:47.720 --> 00:28:54.600 courses you needed to earn this degree. I’m sorry, but we have to revoke your degree, and then try to 00:28:54.600 --> 00:29:01.120 sell them on more courses. Or you might tell them that their certification is expired and they need 00:29:01.120 --> 00:29:07.040 a new one. Once we told someone their degree wasn’t valid until you get the authentication 00:29:07.040 --> 00:29:14.720 certificate which is signed by a senator, and it costs an extra $7,500 to get that. But people were 00:29:14.720 --> 00:29:21.480 taking this to extreme levels. The company just didn’t care how you got money from these people. 00:29:21.480 --> 00:29:28.200 Just get money from them any way you can. So, some of us would call the person and pose as 00:29:28.200 --> 00:29:32.960 the local government and say something like, sir, I’m calling from the government about your 00:29:32.960 --> 00:29:38.080 degree. Congratulations on your degree, but unfortunately it’s not valid in this country 00:29:38.080 --> 00:29:45.800 until you pay an importation fee of $10,000, and we’d get people to pay us all these extra fees. 00:29:45.800 --> 00:29:48.440 JACK: Dang, that’s cold, dude. 00:29:48.440 --> 00:29:54.880 FAZAL: Yeah. Or another was that we’d call them posing as a recruiter for a big company. We’d 00:29:54.880 --> 00:30:01.240 interview them for a job, hire them, but then say, oh no, you are missing this one qualification. You 00:30:01.240 --> 00:30:07.180 need to get an English-speaking endorsement, which I know where you can get one for $5,000. 00:30:07.180 --> 00:30:12.920 JACK: Wow, this is just getting nuttier and nuttier. You know, it’s the classic con game, 00:30:12.920 --> 00:30:15.840 that once you get someone on the hook for a little bit of money, 00:30:15.840 --> 00:30:20.160 you can just keep upping it and upping it, and it works because that person has already 00:30:20.160 --> 00:30:26.760 gave you some money. We humans have this flaw in our operating system regarding some costs. It’s 00:30:26.760 --> 00:30:31.800 hard for us to break off of something that we’ve already poured a lot of money and time into. So, 00:30:31.800 --> 00:30:36.240 at this point, these people have already spent thousands of dollars on their fake degree, and 00:30:36.240 --> 00:30:40.480 it’s just from that alone that this whole thing becomes important to them, that they don’t want to 00:30:40.480 --> 00:30:45.080 lose it. Since it’s already cost them thousands, they’re like, okay, I’ll pay a couple thousand 00:30:45.080 --> 00:30:49.900 more. This is called the Sunk Cost Fallacy, and it’s crazy how effective it is against us. 00:30:49.900 --> 00:30:55.160 FAZAL: Oh, and remember when we got them to take a picture of themselves in the graduation gown 00:30:55.160 --> 00:31:01.880 holding the degree? We’d sometimes use that photo against them and just try to scam them 00:31:01.880 --> 00:31:06.600 by acting like someone else and saying, you don’t know who I am, but I know you 00:31:06.600 --> 00:31:12.680 bought a fake degree from this school. Pay me $8,000 or I’ll show this photo to your boss. 00:31:12.680 --> 00:31:15.480 JACK: Dang, dude, you guys are straight up extorting people. 00:31:15.480 --> 00:31:22.680 FAZAL: Yep. It was bad. It was really bad. But it felt so weird because Axact claimed 00:31:22.680 --> 00:31:27.840 to be the largest IT provider and had these big buildings and a whole fleet 00:31:27.840 --> 00:31:35.520 of company vehicles. So, everywhere you look, it felt normal and okay. 00:31:35.520 --> 00:31:40.280 My parents were proud of me for working in the big office building, you know, 00:31:40.280 --> 00:31:48.300 and having a butler come bring us dinner at home from a five-star restaurant. It was very strange. 00:31:48.300 --> 00:31:53.960 JACK: So, not only are people getting extorted by Axact, but these degrees were catching up with 00:31:53.960 --> 00:31:57.880 people. There was one guy who bought a fake degree and then he got a job as a criminal 00:31:57.880 --> 00:32:05.200 forensic psychologist, and he used his degree to get the job. Then he worked on 700 cases, 00:32:05.200 --> 00:32:11.320 giving his expert advice on them, before they found out he had a fake degree. They arrested 00:32:11.320 --> 00:32:15.360 him and threw him in jail for that, and I think they had to reopen all those cases 00:32:15.360 --> 00:32:20.720 that he was an expert forensic psychologist on. There was this Olympic diving coach who 00:32:20.720 --> 00:32:25.620 got in trouble for using his fake degree to get a job as a diving coach at Indiana University. 00:32:25.620 --> 00:32:31.920 FAZAL: There was one other thing that we might do with the person we are scamming. Sometimes we’d 00:32:31.920 --> 00:32:38.960 call them up to try to scam them, but they were just like, no way. I know I’ve been scammed. I 00:32:38.960 --> 00:32:45.480 paid all this money for a fake degree. You can’t scam me for any more. I’m onto you, right? Well, 00:32:45.480 --> 00:32:52.320 in those cases we would sometimes say, yeah, you know what? You’re right. We are scammers. But hey, 00:32:52.320 --> 00:32:58.840 do you want in on it, too? What we’d do is set up a deal with that person to funnel 00:32:58.840 --> 00:33:04.680 the money through them. Web payments would go through them and they could keep some of it. 00:33:04.680 --> 00:33:10.000 JACK: Oh my god, now they’re converting the victims into money mules? Okay, so, 00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:16.200 a money mule is someone who accepts stolen money from someone else and then sends that to scammers. 00:33:16.200 --> 00:33:20.800 This makes it harder for banks and law enforcement to detect where stolen money is going. The money 00:33:20.800 --> 00:33:25.440 mule typically doesn’t know that what they’re doing is illegal. The deal is that they can keep 00:33:25.440 --> 00:33:29.560 a percent of the money coming through their bank account, and they do very little to earn this; 00:33:29.560 --> 00:33:33.920 just let the money come in and then write the check to send to someone else. So, 00:33:33.920 --> 00:33:39.280 Axact had this whole system of moving money around to avoid detection and shut-down. It’s 00:33:39.280 --> 00:33:44.200 easy for big banks to recognize which bank accounts that might be connected to Axact 00:33:44.200 --> 00:33:48.480 and just stop those transactions, but if they’re constantly shifting the money and 00:33:48.480 --> 00:33:53.520 it’s flowing all around, the big banks just can’t detect this very easily to stop it. 00:33:53.520 --> 00:33:56.960 FAZAL: The money would get funneled through different accounts and 00:33:56.960 --> 00:34:02.120 would often end up in the account of a company in Cyprus or Latvia. You know, 00:34:02.120 --> 00:34:05.720 places that are a little more protected for this type of thing. 00:34:05.720 --> 00:34:11.600 JACK: Dang. Honestly, I gotta hand it to this Axact company. It is really an 00:34:11.600 --> 00:34:16.840 impressive operation that they had set up. I mean, thousands of employees and a lot of them 00:34:16.840 --> 00:34:22.160 being highly-skilled IT workers building websites and doing all kinds of pretty advanced marketing, 00:34:22.160 --> 00:34:27.840 but also they got this business model just dialed in. They figured out the perfect template to start 00:34:27.840 --> 00:34:32.840 a fake university, get victims to come onto the site and then scam them out of a ton of money, 00:34:32.840 --> 00:34:36.840 and then get that money funneled through different mules and offshore accounts. 00:34:36.840 --> 00:34:41.760 Then to do it all at scale, just hiring more and more and more and doing this every day, 00:34:41.760 --> 00:34:48.080 making their workers work twenty-nine days a month — I mean, Axact was growing leaps and bounds, 00:34:48.080 --> 00:34:52.520 and they were setting up hundreds of sites. Here, let me just list a whole bunch of these 00:34:52.520 --> 00:34:57.520 sites for you real quick. There was the Al Arab University, Alford High School, 00:34:57.520 --> 00:35:02.480 Almeda University — okay, this one’s got a Wikipedia entry. Let me see what’s going on here. 00:35:02.480 --> 00:35:07.520 Oh man, so apparently they were selling some law enforcement training, and apparently a bunch of 00:35:07.520 --> 00:35:12.480 cops had gotten some fake degrees or training from this website and then got jobs based off their 00:35:12.480 --> 00:35:18.520 fake training and got in trouble for this. Gosh, it always wrecks me to see people in authority 00:35:18.520 --> 00:35:24.800 breaking the rules. It just shatters my trust in the system every time. Okay, so, there’s so 00:35:24.800 --> 00:35:30.120 many of these sites; Barkley University, Bay View University, Bay City University, 00:35:30.120 --> 00:35:36.520 Bay Town University, Chapel University, Columbiana University, Fort Jones University, McGraw 00:35:36.520 --> 00:35:42.320 University, James Harding University, Pine Hill University, Western Advanced Central University. 00:35:42.320 --> 00:35:47.560 There’s just so many, just so, so many of these. It’s like, once they figured out the game, they 00:35:47.560 --> 00:35:54.360 just kept copying and pasting and expanding and maximizing profits. So, who’s masterminding this 00:35:54.360 --> 00:36:03.680 whole thing? Who figured all this out? Well, Axact was found by a guy named Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh. 00:36:03.680 --> 00:36:11.560 FAZAL: Yes, I met him. He would come to the office and meet with the top sales agents. I’ll tell you, 00:36:11.560 --> 00:36:19.320 he did not seem shady or scammy. He appeared genuine and was influential at getting you to 00:36:19.320 --> 00:36:25.280 do great work. He never talked about all the phony things going on. He only said positive 00:36:25.280 --> 00:36:32.240 things like how much of an impact we are making giving people an education and changing lives. He 00:36:32.240 --> 00:36:39.700 encouraged us to achieve excellence in our work. So, I don’t know if he was the main scammer here. 00:36:39.700 --> 00:36:45.480 JACK: Okay, so this guy Shoaib not only started Axact but also started a TV network called Bol, 00:36:45.480 --> 00:36:50.640 B-O-L. Just looking at their YouTube channel, they show music videos, game shows, talk shows, 00:36:50.640 --> 00:36:56.200 and news channels. They seem pretty popular. Their YouTube channel has five million subscribers, 00:36:56.200 --> 00:37:02.360 and the website says they have 156 channels in sixteen languages. But this is interesting, 00:37:02.360 --> 00:37:06.080 right? A guy who’s running a fake degree scam is 00:37:06.080 --> 00:37:11.600 also controlling the press? He’s got a lot of money and is pretty influential. 00:37:11.600 --> 00:37:18.640 FAZAL: One thing about Pakistan is if you have money, you have power. You 00:37:18.640 --> 00:37:23.640 can get away with doing things that others would be arrested for. Oh, 00:37:23.640 --> 00:37:28.800 and he was always saying about how he was donating to charities and setting 00:37:28.800 --> 00:37:33.780 up different things to help the people of Pakistan. So, a lot of people liked him. 00:37:33.780 --> 00:37:41.320 JACK: The Axact website says Shoaib has set up schools, food and shelter systems, and healthcare 00:37:41.320 --> 00:37:46.960 systems all through his charitable giving. He himself graduated from one of Pakistan’s most 00:37:46.960 --> 00:37:52.600 prestigious business universities, so he clearly has great business skills, but he’s not the only 00:37:52.600 --> 00:37:57.720 one running this company. But I’m having a hard time finding a clear corporate structure showing 00:37:57.720 --> 00:38:02.680 exactly who’s there, and I just don’t know how many executives were involved. It’s possible 00:38:02.680 --> 00:38:08.400 that one of the other executives made up this scheme and got this whole thing going, and maybe 00:38:08.400 --> 00:38:15.280 Shoaib just doesn’t know that there’s a big scam going on? I don’t personally believe that theory, 00:38:15.280 --> 00:38:20.640 that he wouldn’t know what’s going on in his own company. One reason is because of what happened 00:38:20.640 --> 00:38:27.800 in 2009. [MUSIC] Alright, so, in 2009, a woman from Michigan got her online high school diploma 00:38:27.800 --> 00:38:32.840 from an Axact school called Belford High School, and I guess she felt like they lied to her. She 00:38:32.840 --> 00:38:36.520 must have paid for classes and enrolled in the school, but then when she got her diploma and 00:38:36.520 --> 00:38:42.920 realized it was fake, she sued Axact, and that case got turned into a class-action lawsuit. 00:38:42.920 --> 00:38:50.000 There were 30,000 people who were also listed in this lawsuit suing Axact. The lawyer representing 00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:54.240 the victims said he heard hundreds of people give stories about how they felt like they were tricked 00:38:54.240 --> 00:39:03.320 by this scheme. So, imagine being Axact in this moment, okay? 30,000 people are suing you and you 00:39:03.320 --> 00:39:10.960 need to represent yourself in court in the US. So, do you go? Do you go to court? No. Oh god, 00:39:10.960 --> 00:39:16.160 no. Axact does not want to show up in court because it would absolutely taint their record 00:39:16.160 --> 00:39:23.480 no matter what the outcome would be, right? But a defendant did show up to court, some Pakistani 00:39:23.480 --> 00:39:28.800 guy, and his name was Saleem Qureshi, and nobody had ever heard of him before. He doesn’t seem 00:39:28.800 --> 00:39:33.920 to be involved with Axact at all. Like, he’s not someone from their legal team or executive team, 00:39:33.920 --> 00:39:39.640 so what’s he doing here in court and what’s he got to say? Saleem spoke up in court and he’s like, 00:39:39.640 --> 00:39:44.200 okay, listen, it was me who made the Belford High School website. I just made the whole 00:39:44.200 --> 00:39:48.240 thing up inside my apartment, and yeah, I can understand why people feel tricked. I’m 00:39:48.240 --> 00:39:53.240 sorry. I’m not affiliated with Axact, but I was the one who made the thing. In fact, 00:39:53.240 --> 00:39:58.440 this guy Saleem didn’t even go to court. He just phoned it in. He only did a short video 00:39:58.440 --> 00:40:03.200 call from some dimly-lit apartment, and he said he was in Karachi, Pakistan at the time. 00:40:03.200 --> 00:40:08.480 The prosecuting lawyer is like, no, no, no, hold on. The mailbox for Belford High School is the 00:40:08.480 --> 00:40:14.960 same mailbox for Axact, and Saleem is like, ah, yeah, that must have been a mistake. I’m 00:40:14.960 --> 00:40:23.880 not connected to Axact at all, and yep, that’s my mailbox. The judge was like — the judge is like, 00:40:23.880 --> 00:40:33.520 okay Saleem, you said you did it, so you’re guilty. Saleem took the fall. So, in 2012, 00:40:33.520 --> 00:40:42.960 the court ordered him to pay $22.7 million to the plaintiffs. But Saleem just lol’d right out and 00:40:42.960 --> 00:40:48.480 disappeared. He hasn’t paid a cent of that since 2012, and investigators tried to find him, but 00:40:48.480 --> 00:40:56.520 nobody can. He’s hiding out somewhere in Pakistan. I gotta say, that is a brilliant legal move. That 00:40:56.520 --> 00:41:03.400 was the work of Axact’s legal team, right, to just grab some guy to block your whole incoming lawsuit 00:41:03.400 --> 00:41:08.640 and then just make the whole thing disappear. I mean, really, honestly, hats off for that. 00:41:08.640 --> 00:41:14.960 That is such a ridiculous move, and it worked so effectively. Why doesn’t everyone do that? I mean, 00:41:14.960 --> 00:41:19.200 if I ever get sued, I’m just gonna grab someone and be like, hey, could you say you’re Jack and 00:41:19.200 --> 00:41:27.720 just take the blame? It’s just so comical that this simple, stupid trick worked. Like, why didn’t 00:41:27.720 --> 00:41:34.520 the court see through this and be like, no, no, no, hold on a second, get Axact in here? No, this 00:41:34.520 --> 00:41:42.840 guy Saleem convinced the court it was him without even trying very hard. Ugh, this is — I can’t 00:41:42.840 --> 00:41:52.320 get over this. Okay, serious face. So, at this point in the story, a new protagonist shows up. 00:41:52.320 --> 00:41:59.400 His name is Declan Walsh. [MUSIC] Now, I reached out to Declan at least three times. I e-mailed 00:41:59.400 --> 00:42:02.920 him, I tweeted at him, I even went through some of his friends, but no response. The 00:42:02.920 --> 00:42:07.640 dude is mad busy, and I don’t blame him for not responding. But at least I tried, right? Anyway, 00:42:07.640 --> 00:42:12.880 it doesn’t matter, because he left a mark on this story and documented everything along the way. 00:42:12.880 --> 00:42:18.160 Declan Walsh is a reporter for the New York Times, and he was doing a bunch of stories in Pakistan 00:42:18.160 --> 00:42:23.640 and saw this and was like, wait a minute, there’s something not right about this company Axact, 00:42:23.640 --> 00:42:28.120 and investigated. In fact, he spent two years investigating this story. He spoke with a bunch 00:42:28.120 --> 00:42:33.320 of people who worked at Axact and he talked to people who bought fake degrees from there. He even 00:42:33.320 --> 00:42:37.880 spoke with Fazal, the same guy you heard earlier. It was really phenomenal reporting what he did, 00:42:37.880 --> 00:42:43.840 and he published a really good article in the New York Times exposing all the shenanigans that Axact 00:42:43.840 --> 00:42:51.760 was getting up to. He found that Axact had set up over 300 websites of fake schools, and eighteen 00:42:51.760 --> 00:42:57.040 of them were accrediting bodies, fake accrediting bodies. You know, the places that confirm a school 00:42:57.040 --> 00:43:03.240 is legitimate. Dang, that’s just a lot of schools that he’s made up. So much work went into building 00:43:03.240 --> 00:43:09.360 this company. Yeah, well, when Declan’s New York Times article was published, it rippled through 00:43:09.360 --> 00:43:15.680 Pakistan. People were mad. What’s up with this? It looked really bad for a Pakistani company to be so 00:43:15.680 --> 00:43:22.240 scammy, you know? So, the FIA, which is Pakistan’s FBI, was like, okay, okay, we’ll check into it. 00:43:22.240 --> 00:43:26.880 We’ll see if there’s any fraud here. Meanwhile, Axact’s lawyers are sending letters to the 00:43:26.880 --> 00:43:31.720 New York Times, like hey, you’re writing lies about us. We don’t like it. It’s baseless and 00:43:31.720 --> 00:43:38.520 defamatory. We’re gonna pursue strict legal action against you. But the FIA was investigating Axact, 00:43:38.520 --> 00:43:42.560 and yeah, they found enough evidence to open a case. What’s more is they really didn’t like 00:43:42.560 --> 00:43:46.760 the kind of bullying behavior, that they were trying to scam customers out of more money by 00:43:46.760 --> 00:43:53.280 threatening them and deceiving them. So, the FIA took action. They raided the offices of 00:43:53.280 --> 00:43:58.520 Axact. They just started grabbing everything once they got in there; computers, documents, 00:43:58.520 --> 00:44:04.800 people. But absolutely none of the executives were around during the raid, which is kind of 00:44:04.800 --> 00:44:09.680 suspicious. Like, how did those executives know not to come in the office that day? But the people 00:44:09.680 --> 00:44:15.000 they did grab, they questioned them and just let them go. They found in the building next 00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:20.400 to Axact is where they were printing all the fake degrees. They had printers there and fancy paper, 00:44:20.400 --> 00:44:27.160 everything, and they just took it all. At this point, the timeline becomes very dizzying to me. 00:44:27.160 --> 00:44:32.920 I tried my best to get it all sorted out, but it’s just — it’s fuzzy. There’s some gaps, I’m sure, 00:44:32.920 --> 00:44:38.160 but I’ll do what I can to explain what I think happened. But I’m just — let you know the story 00:44:38.160 --> 00:44:44.040 from here on out is kind of difficult to know exactly what happened. So, the FIA raids the Axact 00:44:44.040 --> 00:44:48.400 offices, right? But they didn’t arrest anyone. Well, with the information they gathered from the 00:44:48.400 --> 00:44:53.640 raid, they found enough evidence to put out arrest warrants for twenty-three people, including the 00:44:53.640 --> 00:44:59.680 CEO, Shoaib Shaikh. I can’t tell if any of them were actually caught or arrested or if they turned 00:44:59.680 --> 00:45:03.240 themselves in or did any jail time at all, and I can’t even tell you who the twenty-three people 00:45:03.240 --> 00:45:08.360 are that had arrest warrants out for them. I’m assuming they were executives or people involved. 00:45:08.360 --> 00:45:12.440 Actually, I did see an article that said Shoaib’s wife was one of the people with arrest warrants, 00:45:12.440 --> 00:45:16.800 but hers was dismissed because they didn’t have enough evidence on her. But I did read 00:45:16.800 --> 00:45:21.760 that all twenty-three people who did get arrest warrants were just quickly released on bail. 00:45:21.760 --> 00:45:25.960 So, I don’t know if they did any jail time or just maybe a day or two before leaving. 00:45:25.960 --> 00:45:31.120 During that FIA investigation they found that guy Saleem, the guy who took the fall for the 00:45:31.120 --> 00:45:38.480 class-action lawsuit a few years back. He admitted that Axact had paid him to take the fall. In fact, 00:45:38.480 --> 00:45:43.680 when he was appearing on video in court, he only acted like he was moving his lips, 00:45:43.680 --> 00:45:50.680 and then some Axact official was off-camera saying the things for him. Then they paid him $250 to go 00:45:50.680 --> 00:45:56.920 into hiding and disappear. Well, the FIA was like, okay, we did our job. We gathered the evidence, 00:45:56.920 --> 00:46:02.440 we raided the office, we arrested some folks. Court, it’s now on you to finish up and sentence 00:46:02.440 --> 00:46:09.320 them. There’s documents that suggest that Axact made hundreds of millions of dollars from their 00:46:09.320 --> 00:46:16.080 scams. They took money from over 200,000 people around the world, and this means it was one of 00:46:16.080 --> 00:46:22.020 the biggest scams of all time. Stephen Colbert even joked about this. Here, listen to this. 00:46:22.020 --> 00:46:26.560 STEPHEN: That’s right, the Pakistani company Axact was selling fake college diplomas, 00:46:26.560 --> 00:46:31.920 which explains where Bin Laden got his degree in women’s studies. [LAUGHTER] Luckily, 00:46:31.920 --> 00:46:37.600 Pakistani authorities arrested the Axact CEO, charging him with illegal money transfers, 00:46:37.600 --> 00:46:42.600 forgery, and fraud. No doubt he’ll represent himself in court. I hear he’s got like, twenty 00:46:42.600 --> 00:46:48.960 law degrees. Well, I for one am glad they caught the guy. Charging people hundreds of thousands 00:46:48.960 --> 00:46:51.954 of dollars for fake degrees is appalling. I believe that fake college should be free. 00:46:51.954 --> 00:47:02.160 JACK: Fake college should be free. I agree, Stephen. Fake college should always be free. Now, 00:47:02.160 --> 00:47:09.200 before the sentence could be carried out, this guy Judge Memon suddenly and out of the blue acquitted 00:47:09.200 --> 00:47:13.720 all of the people who were accused. Somehow the number was now at twenty-seven people being 00:47:13.720 --> 00:47:20.240 accused. So, Shoaib and twenty-six others just all had their charges dropped by the judge and 00:47:20.240 --> 00:47:28.760 they were free to go. Like, you’re done. There was no explanation or anything. It was just unreal. 00:47:28.760 --> 00:47:33.120 But the Pakistani court’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Wait, what just happened? They 00:47:33.120 --> 00:47:39.680 looked into this guy, Judge Memon, further, and they found that he accepted a bribe from Shoaib 00:47:39.680 --> 00:47:45.760 for about $18,000 to just acquit everyone. Once the court found out about this bribe, they fired 00:47:45.760 --> 00:47:54.119 the judge and un-acquitted all twenty-seven people involved, and reopened all the cases. One guy was 00:47:54.119 --> 00:47:58.000 pretty unlucky in all this, Umair Hamid. He was the vice president of Axact, and guess what? He 00:47:58.000 --> 00:48:03.320 was living in the US, so the authorities were able to nab him, and he pled guilty. He had no escape 00:48:03.320 --> 00:48:08.560 from the US justice system. There was no one to put in front of him and say, it’s this other guy. 00:48:08.560 --> 00:48:15.520 So, he went to prison for a year and a half. In 2018, the Pakistani Sessions Court found 00:48:15.520 --> 00:48:22.000 twenty-three Axact employees and executives guilty of impersonation, cheating and dishonesty, 00:48:22.000 --> 00:48:26.880 forgery, and aiding and abetting. The judge is like, okay, I’m gonna give you all your sentence 00:48:26.880 --> 00:48:34.480 now. But then there’s this moment in court where the judge is like, where is everyone? None of 00:48:34.480 --> 00:48:40.480 the twenty-three defendants showed up to their sentencing hearing, none. So the judge is like, 00:48:40.480 --> 00:48:45.640 well, that’s rude. I’m removing all your bail and I’m calling for your re-arrest with no bail 00:48:45.640 --> 00:48:51.880 option this time. Then the court issued prison sentences for all twenty-three people. I think 00:48:51.880 --> 00:48:56.600 the highest that someone got was seven years in prison, but collectively, it all added up to 00:48:56.600 --> 00:49:01.720 twenty years prison time. On top of that, they were all fined a significant amount of rupees, 00:49:01.720 --> 00:49:10.720 too. Also, somewhere in here, Shoaib lost control over Bol, that TV studio he started. 00:49:10.720 --> 00:49:16.000 It looks like the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority revoked the broadcasting 00:49:16.000 --> 00:49:21.600 license that Bol had, I guess until Shoaib stepped down or something. But then in 2023, 00:49:21.600 --> 00:49:27.040 a different company came in and bought Bol, so it’s definitely out of his hands now. 00:49:27.040 --> 00:49:32.400 Okay, so, that’s that, right? Twenty-three people sentenced to prison for this whole Axact degree 00:49:32.400 --> 00:49:37.080 mill scam. You’d think Axact would just shutter its business and the CEO would just face his 00:49:37.080 --> 00:49:43.280 punishment. Well, no, not from what I could tell. Even though he was sentenced in 2018, 00:49:43.280 --> 00:49:49.120 it wasn’t until 2023 that he was arrested. Don’t ask me how he managed to stay free 00:49:49.120 --> 00:49:53.120 all that time. Like I said, the details here are just baffling to say the least, 00:49:53.120 --> 00:49:59.480 and I have a lot of questions. But apparently business went on as normal in Axact. There’s a 00:49:59.480 --> 00:50:05.040 video of the FIA arresting the CEO, Shoaib, at the Islamabad Airport. I’ll try to describe the 00:50:05.040 --> 00:50:10.880 scene to you. Shoaib’s wearing a black polo shirt, but he’s looking very calm and a little confused, 00:50:10.880 --> 00:50:15.400 but not struggling or yelling or anything. They put him in a car and they drive him away. Kind 00:50:15.400 --> 00:50:20.840 of uneventful. Even after all that, there’s still a lot of people on his side. The Bol 00:50:20.840 --> 00:50:25.000 news station was saying things like, he’s being abducted. We don’t know where they took him, 00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:29.120 and they’re only arresting him because the supports Imran Khan, and this whole arrest is 00:50:29.120 --> 00:50:35.960 a violation of freedom of speech. But you can guess his arrest didn’t last long. I believe 00:50:35.960 --> 00:50:40.920 he only spent two days in jail and then was released. All I can find is that he submitted 00:50:40.920 --> 00:50:46.840 documents to the FIA who then let him go based off those documents. Are you still working there? 00:50:46.840 --> 00:50:54.680 FAZAL: No, no, no. My wife was not happy with me being part of this and wanted me to quit, 00:50:54.680 --> 00:51:01.460 so I did. Yeah, I don’t work there anymore. I’ve gone to work for a different tech company. 00:51:01.460 --> 00:51:09.200 JACK: So, yeah, that’s where we stand today. Axact, it looks to me that they’re still in 00:51:09.200 --> 00:51:14.800 operation, and the CEO did not serve his prison sentence and I guess is doing just 00:51:14.800 --> 00:51:21.600 fine out in the world. What could he be doing, appealing the case? That’s possible, or maybe 00:51:21.600 --> 00:51:27.280 he just had some deals with people to — like, don’t arrest him anymore or drop the…? I don’t 00:51:27.280 --> 00:51:31.120 know. It’s just too hard for me to cut through the noise to find answers of what’s going on 00:51:31.120 --> 00:51:36.240 over there. My guess is that with his wealth and power, he just has a lot of pull in that 00:51:36.240 --> 00:51:42.120 country. Politicians and government officials have been very vocal that they’re on his side, 00:51:42.120 --> 00:51:46.640 and who knows what they’re doing to help him get out of all this mess. I have a feeling that 00:51:46.640 --> 00:51:55.344 this is not the last time we’ll hear about Axact, and I’m really curious what they get up to next. 00:51:55.344 --> 00:52:04.080 (OUTRO): [OUTRO MUSIC] A big thank-you to Fazal, which is not his real name, for sharing this 00:52:04.080 --> 00:52:07.360 story with us. If it wasn’t for him bringing me this story and telling me all about this, 00:52:07.360 --> 00:52:12.000 I wouldn’t even know about this. Oh, and thanks to Shrikant Jashi for doing the voice acting on 00:52:12.000 --> 00:52:17.480 this one. If you’re looking for a new shirt, I got your back. Go to shop.darknetdiaries.com 00:52:17.480 --> 00:52:22.760 and check it out. I think there are over fifty different shirt designs there, and I guarantee 00:52:22.760 --> 00:52:27.600 you’re gonna find one you love. So, please check out the shop. This episode was created by me, 00:52:27.600 --> 00:52:32.000 the TikTok tiger, Jack Rhysider, sound design by the wiley-whiskered Andrew 00:52:32.000 --> 00:52:37.280 Meriwether. This episode was assembled by the struned-perfumed raccoon, Tristan Ledger, 00:52:37.280 --> 00:52:42.240 mixing done by Proximity Sound, and our theme music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. 00:52:42.240 --> 00:52:55.240 What happens if you severely overclock a PC? It goes up in frames. This is Darknet Diaries.