Money Matters, Simplified.
Reed College website plagiarized by scammers
by Jaspreet Virk - March 1, 2011 - comments
Further, like the Red College, Redwood's website claims to have “116-acre tree-lined campus,” “24 buildings and 23 residence halls,” and “approximately 1400 students.”
Those applying for colleges and universities based on the information offered online, beware! You might come across a fake website trying to cheat you off your money. This is what a fake educational institute, University of Redwood, has been accused of.
Not only is the university fake, its website has also ripped off entire content from the site of legitimate educational institution, Reed College in Portland.
The fake University of Redwood website seems to have been created to defraud prospective students and make money in the form of application fees.
"It became obvious to us that Reed was not the target of this scam, but potential students in China could be scammed and we felt a responsibility to take the site down."--Kevin Myers of Reed College
Striking similarities
If you look at both the websites, you will surely notice similarities. For instance, both Reed College and University of Redwood were founded in 1908 and became operational in 1911.
While the Reed website states that the college is “named for Oregon pioneers Simeon and Amanda Reed,” Redwood page reads that the university is “named after the Oregon pioneers Simeon and Amanda Redwood.”
Further, just like the Red College, Redwood's website claims to have “116-acre tree-lined campus,” “24 buildings and 23 residence halls,” and “approximately 1400 students.”
In fact, except the name, the entire website has been duplicated.
The contact address mentioned in the website belongs to the mail-forwarding company, which seems to be forwarding Redwood's mail to an address in China.
Reeds College fights to get down the copycat website
According to the Wall Street Journal report, the officials at the Reeds College recently discovered that their entire site have been plagiarized by a fake educational institute.
"It became obvious to us that Reed was not the target of this scam, but potential students in China could be scammed and we felt a responsibility to take the site down," said Kevin Myers of Reed College.
“We suspect that there's somebody in China pretending to be director of admissions for the University of Redwood," he added.
The lawyers of the Reed College had issued cease and desist order to GoDaddy.com, the company that hosts the fake education website.
After the order, the company did take down the site, but for only a few days. Currently, the fake website is up and running.
According to GoDaddy.com, the site has been enabled after removing all the “allegedly infringing material.”
But the Reed College believes that infringement still continues, and said that it is doing its best to get the site removed permanently.