According to a new report from Benjamin Plackett of the Chronicle of Higher Education, there’s a scam going around.

‘World’s Largest University’ Is Scamming Students, Investigation Reveals

A global network of fraudulent online universities is using high-pressure sales tactics and phony scholarships to extract money from students who end up with worthless degrees.

Graduate schools and potential employers who check degrees would not accept qualifications from the institutions in this network, leaving any graduates from the institutions unable to move on in their professional or academic careers.

An expert presented with the details of the network saw plenty of room for suspicion. “I see the commonalities and duplication of material across their websites and I have to assume they’re all fake,” said George Gollin, a professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Gollin tracks down diploma mills—pretend universities that issue worthless degrees—and exposes them. One investigation he participated in resulted in the owners of a diploma mill serving jail time.

The universities in the network, which typically say they are based in the United States, actively encourage students from the Arab world to enroll by offering what appear to be generous scholarships after just a few minutes of exchanging instant messages online. But that financial aid comes with a hook—the students are supposed to pay the rest of the fees immediately.