Stiff Fines for an Infamous Diploma Mill

Two brothers who ran Trinity Southern University, the online diploma mill that sold a master’s degree to a cat, have been ordered by the Texas attorney general to pay more than $100,000 in penalties for its lack of academic standards. The operation, based in Dallas, charged customers as much as $499 to obtain degrees without taking any courses or tests. Investigators in Pennsylvania jump-started a civil lawsuit against Trinity Southern after obtaining a degree for one investigator’s cat simply by sending the diploma mill a rÃ©sumÃ© in the pet’s name.

For more on the cat with the M.B.A., see an article by Daniel Engber.