Harvard Diploma

Why spend four years and thousands of dollars investing in an Ivy League degree when you can just pay for an inauthentic sheepskin that proclaims you a graduate? In 2009, law enforcement in Russia broke up a crime ring that reportedly sold fake Harvard diplomas for $40,000. Most diploma mills here in the U.S. are marginally less blatant; they adopt a name similar to a renowned school. Sounds like a simple trick, but sometimes it even fools the Feds. A 2004 study by the General Accounting Office found 463 federal employees held “degrees” from these pay-for-play institutions.
Swiss Cheese

Emmentaler cheese: yellow, big holes, good for fondue. You think you’d know it when you see it, but fake fromage is produced in other countries and manufactured to mimic the real thing, right down to the holes and a false identification label. This counterfeit cheese makes up as much as 10 percent of the total sold worldwide. This hurts the Swiss cheesemaking industry, so scientists have begun adding a distinctive, tasteless bacteria to Emmentaler during production to ensure that only genuine Swiss makes it into store refrigerators.













