How to Spot a Fake Diploma Before They Fool You

Thinking about dropping $200–$300 on a realistic-looking replica diploma? Before you hand over your cash, ask yourself this: how do you know you’re buying from a legitimate provider—and not from a scam site ready to vanish with your money?

There’s actually a surprisingly simple way to tell the difference.

Check the Samples. Seriously.

Legit companies that create replica diplomas will proudly show off their work. But scam sites? They’ll blur out or cover key information on their samples—like the student’s name, major, and graduation date. That’s your red flag right there. Why hide these details unless they’re trying to conceal something?

The Scam Playbook: Stolen Diploma Images

Here’s how the trick works: shady fake diploma sites don’t actually create most of the samples they show off. Instead, they scavenge LinkedIn, job boards, and resume sites, looking for real graduates who have posted photos of their actual diplomas. Then, they crop or Photoshop those images—sometimes adding a fake wooden background to make it look like they were photographed professionally—and pass them off as their own work.

Of course, those diplomas contain identifying details. If you could clearly see the name, major, and date, you’d know they were taken from someone else’s personal page—not created by the site. That’s why scammers blur or block that info, usually by stamping their website name across the image or just obscuring the text entirely.

Here’s the Logic Test:

If a company really made the fake diploma themselves, why would they need to hide the student info at all? Why not just use a placeholder name like “Jane Doe” or “Your Name Here”? And why blur the major or graduation date? Are they trying to protect a client’s privacy—or protect themselves from being caught stealing?

Spoiler alert: it’s the latter.

A Scam That Keeps Recycling Itself

We’ve seen the same diploma images pop up across multiple sites, each one claiming they created the design. But in truth, these images were lifted from unsuspecting graduates’ LinkedIn profiles and used without permission. The scammers just keep repackaging and rebranding them.

The Bottom Line

This is all about how to spot a fake diploma before it fools you. If a diploma site is hiding essential details in their sample images, they’re not protecting customer privacy—they’re hiding the fact that the diplomas aren’t theirs to begin with. They’re lying to you from the start.

And if they’re willing to deceive you about that, what else are they lying about? The quality of the product? The delivery time? Whether you’ll even get anything at all?

Don’t get scammed. Do your research, scrutinize the samples, and trust your instincts.

Bottom line: If the samples are blurry, the truth probably is too.