School sues ‘diploma mill’ participants

A Mead woman and her associates, who are accused of operating Internet-based “diploma mills,” are being sued in U.S. District Court by Regis University, a Jesuit school in Denver that claims its reputation is being damaged.

Dixie Randock, her daughter, Heidi K. Lorhan, and three of their business associates who jointly operate “St. Regis University” are accused in the suit of trademark infringement, unfair competition, unfair business practices and trademark dilution.

The federal suit was filed Monday in Spokane, just a few weeks after the Republic of Liberia issued a formal statement that claims Randock’s operation is perpetuating a fraud by claiming it has Liberian government accreditation.

Randock’s operation also has made similar Liberian “Board of Education” accreditation available for sale to other diploma mills, usually online sites that sell “college degrees” for a few thousand dollars, sometimes giving credit for life experiences.

People throughout the United States, including teachers and other government employees, have used the bogus degrees to become eligible for jobs or promotions. The use or sale of such degrees is illegal in Oregon, North Dakota, New Jersey and Illinois, but not in Washington or Idaho.

Regis University is represented in its suit by the law firm of Merchant & Gould, which specializes in trademark infringement and intellectual properties cases. Attorneys for the firm and Regis University officials declined comment Thursday.

It is the first formal action taken against the Spokane-based diploma mill, alleging Randock and her associates are violating the federal Lanham Act and the Washington Consumer Protection Act.

Six months ago, Indiana state education commissioner Jeff Weber urged Washington state Attorney General Christine Gregoire to initiate legal action against Randock and her St. Regis operation, which sells college degrees online.

The Indiana state official called for intervention by the Washington attorney general after it was revealed that workers facing layoffs at an Indiana auto plant had spent at least $42,000 in federal educational retraining money to buy worthless advanced degrees from St. Regis.

The Washington attorney general’s office has taken no formal action, but an investigation reportedly is under way.

Assistant Attorney General Jack Zurlini said Thursday he still couldn’t confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation.

In the new suit, Richard J. Hoyer, of Rochester, N.Y., also is named as a defendant, along with Steven K. Randock and Kenneth Pearson, both of Spokane.

Like Randock, Hoyer has long been affiliated with so-called “distance-learning programs” and was president of the International College of Homeland Security until legal action was initiated by the state of New York.

Dixie Randock, who previously only answered written questions submitted by e-mail, did not respond Thursday when asked for comment.

She operates out of an office building in Mead where she once sold real estate. Her first venture into online learning came when she began offering a real estate training course over the Internet.

She later became involved in selling star registry certificates to people who wanted to name a heavenly body after a loved one. She also has operated another Web site that, for $50, will issue a registration certificate for “sightings of mysterious, unexplained phenomena,” ranging from UFOs to Bigfoot.

The St. Regis group currently is affiliated with 13 fake, online universities and six bogus high schools, including Liberty Prep and Branford Academy. Their target audience is individuals with GEDs who want to say they “graduated” from a high school.

George Gollin, a University of Illinois physics professor who is an expert on diploma mill operations, said the Spokane suit is “an interesting development.”

“It is the second lawsuit in recent weeks brought by a legitimate university seeking to protect its good name after finding that an unaccredited entity has selected a confusingly similar name for itself,” Gollin said. His attention to the dangers posed by fake universities is done as faculty public service, required of all University of Illinois professors.

He said St. Regis University continued its online diploma selling even after Liberia’s Commission of Higher Education declared the operation was illegal and not accredited by the African nation.

“If the material of the suit proves to be accurate, I don’t see how the people named in it could sleep at night. Liberia is a civil war-torn country struggling to re-establish the most basic of services for its civilians,” Gollin said.

“To profit from the nightmarish conditions there in order to sell academically meaningless credentials to Americans is inhuman,” Gollin said.

At one point, he said, St. Regis claimed to be processing “more than 150,000 applications” a year. “Either the scale of the problem or the brazenness of St. Regis’ owners is astonishing, in my opinion,” Gollin said.