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Nine years, three employers and a residence permit on a pharmacist's diploma bought through an acquaintance: the Lida case, and the job application that finally triggered a check
A forged diploma does not have to be good. It has to be unchecked, and a case from the Belarusian town of Lida shows how long that can last.
According to Reform.news, a foreign national worked in Lida for several years on a fake pharmacist's diploma. Years earlier an acquaintance had offered to arrange a diploma from a prestigious university, and the man received a forged document stating a specialisation in pharmacy. He used it with three employers over the next nine years. In 2019 he moved to Belarus, obtained a residence permit and took a job with an organisation in Lida. In April of the following year he looked for work in Hrodna and presented the diploma to a prospective employer, who found it suspicious and started a check. The Investigative Committee opened a criminal case under part 1 of article 380 of the criminal code, for using a knowingly forged document that grants rights, and the man admitted guilt.
Three employers and an immigration office accepted the document. The fourth employer, for whatever reason, picked up the phone. The forged diploma had not changed; the willingness to verify had.
Belarus has appeared on this site before, in the Indian embassy's advice to students in Minsk to deal with universities directly rather than through agents. The Lida case is the other side of the same system: a country with real universities, real pharmacies and a real criminal code, in which a fake credential nonetheless circulated for nearly a decade because nobody who accepted it had asked its issuer.
For students, the "acquaintance who can arrange a diploma" is a figure who exists in every country, and the offer is always framed as a shortcut past an unfair system. The Lida man's shortcut ran for nine years and ended in a criminal record, in a foreign country, with every year of work on it voided. The slow route, a real course and a verifiable certificate, would by then have been long finished.
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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.