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Forty-one medical diplomas with the seals of three Bolivian universities, none of them real: the cross-border forgery ring caught by Brazil's doctor-recruitment programme
Bolivia's public and private universities train doctors who work across South America, and Bolivian diplomas are accepted by neighbours' recruitment programmes. That acceptance is what a forgery ring set out to exploit.
According to La Razón and Medular Digital, Brazil's Ministry of Health reported that among applicants to its "Mais Médicos" programme, which recruits doctors for underserved areas, it had detected 41 false medical diplomas bearing the seals of three Bolivian universities, and asked the Universidad Mayor de San Simón, the Universidad Ecológica de Santa Cruz and a university named as Cosmos for their records. Bolivia's Ministry of Education and prosecutors investigated, detecting fifteen false medicine degrees issued in the country, and described an international network of Brazilians and Bolivians. Two people were detained. Prosecutors said the forgers had copied the signatures of Ministry of Education officials and of consular officers of both countries, and the seals of every institution that validates a degree for use abroad; a separate strand involved the falsification of eighty mandatory-social-service resolutions from the Beni health department, with a health-service official detained after the papers were supplied to people seeking to obtain medical degrees. Infobae reported an earlier, different controversy in 2019, when Bolivia's interim government said that only 205 of 702 Cuban medical personnel in the country had presented degrees. Those investigated are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
Why this belongs on a site for students choosing where to study. A degree's value abroad depends on a chain of stamps, university, ministry, consulate, and the ring forged every link. Brazil's programme caught it only because it asked the universities themselves. A student who plans to practise in a third country should assume that country will do the same, and should choose a university whose records office answers such letters quickly and accurately. A university that cannot confirm its own graduates, or an agent who offers to "handle the apostille" for a fee, is a link in this chain, not a shortcut through it.
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This is a news-sourced case summary written by the TrustMBBS team, not a first-person account; see the sources above. They reflect one person's experience and are not a verdict on any institution. Report your own: Report a scam or tell your story.