Forged Documents Are Like Cancer to Society and the Economy

Let’s talk about four recent incidents in different parts of the world to understand how severe of an issue forged documents are:

1. In Mumbai, India, a businessman was arrested last week for duping a bank of more than $330,000 using bogus documents. The man took out a loan of $337,000 from the Central Bank of India using fake documents and defaulted on the loan.
2. Four people from Asian countries were arrested and sentenced to a six-month jail by the Dubai Criminal Court. They were accused of forging their UAE entry visa. 
3. Nine members of a criminal organization were arrested in Madrid, Spain for creating and selling forged documents to migrants. 
4. According to the French soccer club Saint-Etienne, Cambodia’s Prince Norodom Ravichak used fabricated documents to show that his bid to buy the club came with a 100 million euro bank guarantee.

These are only a small number of incidents that captured the media attention. There are millions of fake documents flying under the radar from one place to another, boosting criminal activity and causing serious economic damage. 

Knock, Knock! Blockchain Is Here to Help

While passports, ID cards, and visas are highly sought after in the fake document market, it’s the education and job sectors where document fraud has spread like cancer. A staggering 78% job seekers misrepresent their academic and professional credentials to land better paying jobs. Thousands of high-profile executives including CEOs and VPs have reached the top using bogus certificates. 

The quest for a foolproof method to prevent document fraud has been a futile one, so far. Designing more secure documents doesn’t help much because the fraudsters are always coming up with creative ways to make forged documents look genuine.

Blockademia, a Cardano-based decentralized information system, believes blockchain is the panacea for document fraud. It aims to put an end to the rising number of false academic and professional credentials by enabling institutions to issue certificates and diplomas on the blockchain.

The project also allows document issuers to bring authenticity to insurance policies, title deeds, state documents, source codes, certificates of ownership, music and film rights, and a variety of other documents.

Blockchain technology creates a chain of transactions that nobody can tamper with without consensus among parties involved. Even if you tamper a document, it leaves a trail for everyone to see. There’s no hiding. Blockchain ensures permanence and integrity of documents by creating a hash for every version of the document. 

It means anyone can keep track of when a document was added to the blockchain and when it was modified or manipulated. Only the verified documents are broadcast on the network. 

For people and institutions concerned about privacy, Blockademia offers greater privacy than traditional document management systems by anonymizing data and requiring permissions to access the documents.

Conclusion

Blockchain technology with its immutable chain of transactions with end-to-end encryption could dramatically reduce document fraud. Projects like Blockademia are creating a much-needed solution to a serious problem that has been troubling educational institutions and employers for decades. Putting the verifiable records on blockchain will instantly eliminate doubts and prevent cheaters from rigging the system with fake credentials.