Going to the dentist can be a stressful enough experience. But patients in Italy now have to contend with a new concern: wondering if the dentist knows enough to tell a molar from a macaroon.
The police have uncovered a ring selling dental qualifications, and on Wednesday the carabinieri were sifting through mounds of impounded documents, trying to get to the bottom of the scam. A degree cost â,¬200 000 (about R1,5-million).
Almost 100 people, including 60 students, university teachers and administrators, have fallen under suspicion in the investigation, codenamed Operation Clean Teeth 2.
Investigators said they have found evidence of faked lecture-attendance records, of students being passed questions in advance, and even of entire degree theses being written to order.
In exchange for their services, university staff are said to have received free holidays, expensive gifts, one-off payments and, in some cases, regular pay supplements of â,¬1 000 a month.
The racket was centred on Turin but involved faculties as far away as Catania on Sicily. A large part of the faking and fiddling was done at two universities in Rome.
More than 40 searches were carried out in various parts of Italy on Tuesday. Documents were taken from university offices and private houses.
Operation Clean Teeth 2 grew out of an investigation of phoney diplomas for dental hygienists. The clients were found to be notionally enrolled in universities in Sweden, Côte d’Ivoire and former Yugoslav republics.
This year. the principal of a crammer in Turin was arrested and charged with a variety of offences in connection with the scam.
The carabinieri said the organisers of the trade in faked dentists’ degrees placed adverts in specialised periodicals to trawl for hygienists and others interested in making a career with the drill.
Only last year the main university in Rome was at the centre of another falsified academic qualifications scandal. Investigators said they had secretly recorded conversations in which law students at La Sapienza University bought exam results using a code based on the names of flowers.
The fraud was run by three administrators who arranged deals between well-to-do undergraduates and junior lecturers willing to let them have the answers to exam questions.
In the past 20 years, there have been a number of exam-rigging scandals in Italian universities, including those of Venice, Naples, Pescara and Messina. — Guardian Unlimited Â