A former Axact employee who exposed the Pakistani IT company for making millions from fake online degrees is calling on authorities to investigate the Dubai-based Axact FC LLC.
“They are misusing the facilities of this country (UAE) and using it for a bad cause and I want to reveal their fraud here as well,” alleged Yasir Jamshaid in an interview to Gulf News at its office in Dubai.
Jamshaid said that Axact FC LLC, is based in Dubai Internet City (free zone) but the entire operation by Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) is being conducted in Karachi.
99.99 per cent of Axact’s 600,000 shares are registered under the Dubai company’s name, Axact FC LLC. Only one share is under the name of Shoaib Shaikh, CEO and owner of Axact, while one share is under the name of his wife, Aisha, with the remaining 599,998 registered under Axact FC LLC.
Jamshaid, a former quality control officer at Axact in Karachi who now lives in the UAE, said that he is willing to cooperate with authorities and wants to help people scammed by the bogus degree mill to recover their money.
“My job was to listen to phone calls between our sales agent and customers. The sales agents give themselves fake names and claim to be professors from different universities,” he said.
So far Jamshaid has helped two scammed customers from the UAE and two in Saudi Arabia and hopes on helping others to retrieve their money in the future.
“There was a woman in Al Ain, who bought 18 degrees from fake online universities in three years. I listened to the sales agent call her back claiming that she was a US government official.
“The agent claimed that government officials found out about her fake degrees. The agent told the lady she will lose her job if she does not pay Dh90,000 to cancel all 18 degrees and get one accredited degree instead, which she eventually did,” he said.
Jamshaid said he has received threats and fears for his safety – the reason that he recently moved to the UAE with his family. “My wife and family members are angry at me for exposing the story. I ran to the UAE, I am very tense because of this.”
Before quitting his job at Axact, Jamshaid started writing down and recording on his phone as many details as he could of the people scammed (22), who in total have paid $600,000 (around Dh22 million) in total to the company.
He says he has the names and accounts of some people involved in Axact’s Dubai operations and is willing to share them with authorities if needed.
AXACT DUBAI OFFICE CLOSED FOR TWO YEARS:
A separate report published in Khaleej Times on Thursday said that the office of Axact in Dubai has been closed for two years.
The newspaper said its staff visited three addresses of Axact listed in the online business directory and found only one bearing the name of the company.
A security guard working at the business centre where the office is located told Khaleej Times that “nobody had visited this office in the last two years and it hasn’t been opened even once.”
The guard did confirm that the company was owned by a ‘Pakistani businessman’.
