Website offers fake degrees for GBP165

I've certainly had spam offering to sell me degrees. Ususally these have been by strange institutions selling genuine degrees which are based on a notional idea of accrediting your life experience or whatever, not worth much in reality but at least a cover of respectability. Wha tthis Guardian article is about is actually forgeries of legit university certificates. And the issue is, how would you tell if it was fake. Of course there might be clues like the way a CV doesn't add up [how could he have 5 years experience of trainmapping and done 3 years at a degree in the last 6 years?]. But if they've carefully vetted and doctored the CV, what then? My guess is that there will have to be an electronic clearing-house for verification of qualifications.

I must admit that I was surprised how easily my qualifiications are accepted as being bona fide, particulary as the degree certificates are pretty unpreposessing. I cna't help thinking that the whole accreditation business needs better back-up now that degrees can be worth so much in the jobs market place.