Porn stash found on Axact computers

KARACHI:

The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has found pornographic content on computers seized from the offices of Axact for investigation into the organisation’s multibillion-dollar fake degrees empire.

On Saturday, several news channels, quoting insiders in the FIA, reported that Axact had been hosting different porn websites on dozens of its servers.

Read: 2.2m fake degress recovered from Axact offices: FIA

Apart from the fake degrees, sources said, Axact’s other money-spinner was hosting pornographic websites and sites illegal in other countries. The FIA investigators have extracted data from about 25 such adult websites from the seized computers.

The sources said that Axact was running the websites on dozens of servers and was even involved in producing adult content, which was then uploaded on the internet. An inquiry is being conducted to ascertain whether the movies were made in Pakistan or out of the country.

Read: ‘Fake degree empire’ collapses: Axact CEO nailed

During a late night raid at Axact offices on May 27, the FIA found hundreds of thousands of forged degrees and students ID cards from a secret office of the company in Karachi.

Piles of degree templates from different universities were seen stacked in rooms at the building, where The New York Times exposé said a worldwide, multimillion-dollar fake diploma empire was being run by Axact. The inquiry against the firm was ordered by Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan a day after the article was published.

Apart from the degrees, thousands of accreditation certificates and students cards were also found at the office.

The NYT report had accused the Karachi-based firm of not only issuing fake diplomas and degrees from a host of online universities but also running a bogus, parallel accreditation system, which in some instances even carried verifications from the US State Department with forged signatures of John Kerry.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 14^th, 2015.