Join on WhatsApp
Join on Telegram
Marrakech – Police in Meknes, working with the General Directorate for Territorial Surveillance (DGST), arrested a 25-year-old man on Monday, July 20, over his suspected role in forging official documents and academic certificates and selling them for money.
According to converging reports from Moroccan media, digital monitoring units first flagged social media ads offering official documents, university diplomas, and school certificates for illegal use. Continued investigations identified the suspect and led to his arrest.
A search turned up forged certificates and diplomas in his possession, along with a list of names and documents and sums of cash believed to be proceeds from the scheme. The suspect was placed under judicial investigation supervised by the competent prosecutor. Investigators are still working to locate and detain others linked to the operation.
The case echoes a larger fraud that surfaced at Ibn Zohr University in Agadir. In April this year, the financial crimes chamber at the Marrakech Court of Appeal sentenced Ahmed Kilech, a law professor at the university, to four years in prison and a fine of MAD 237,000 ($23,700).
The court convicted him of bribery and abuse of presumed influence tied to the forging of degrees at the Faculty of Legal, Economic and Social Sciences.
The affair, known in the press as the “sale of master’s degrees” or the “diplomas scandal,” centered on the fraudulent delivery of master’s and doctoral diplomas in exchange for money.
Security services had arrested Kilech in May 2025, by order of an investigating judge, as part of a corruption probe into manipulated student registrations and degrees granted for money or influence.
The fallout reached the university’s leadership. In June 2025, the Minister of Higher Education, Azzedine El Midaoui, placed Ibn Zohr under an interim presidency, naming Abderrahmane Amsidder to replace Abdelaziz Bendou, who was removed over the scandal, until Nabil Hmina was later appointed as the university’s new president.
The university enrolls more than 120,000 students across southern Morocco.
