Fake History Degree for Bragging Rights Carries Prison Time

Forging a degree for bragging: up to three years in prison

Can you forge a university degree that no one will check, just to show it off and look good? A 50-year-old unemployed man, without high school or secondary education, receiving the over-52 subsidy and social electricity bonus, proposed exactly this: he wants to claim he has a History degree from UNED (National Distance Education University) and back it up with paper. His argument —smart people know a degree proves nothing, but fools are impressed— marks where domestic trickery meets the Penal Code. He asks for something simple, with no ambition beyond his living room. The short answer: simple is expensive.

From Chapaprieta to Photoshop: what was he really looking for?

The plan wasn't for a job interview. Not even for a CV. The idea was to show the diploma to someone known, like wedding photos. To gauge the real weight of the paper, he proposed a knowledge test: if someone claims a History degree and doesn't know who Chapaprieta was, the title becomes irrelevant. He concluded that in his street environment, the document matters more than the data. "I am quite cultured, especially for my status and social role," he argued, before admitting he also receives subsidies and that the idea had passed.

He wanted something cheap and uncomplicated: equivalent to single-sided banknotes sold online, 100 units for ten euros. The metaphor is revealing. No one looks at the other side of a single-sided note because it's only shown briefly.

What penalty does forging an official degree carry?

Forging a public document —and an official university degree is one— has incivil consequences. The range handled in these cases goes from six months to three years in prison, and material forgery can be combined with impersonation if the paper is used to practice a regulated profession. This is the framework to understand before ordering anything from a local shop or website.

There is a nuance that changes everything. According to a judge's criterion in this discussion, only those who buy a degree and use it to access a job or civil service exam commit a crime; acquiring it to hang in the living room might not be the same offense. In other words: decorative lies and operational lies do not weigh the same. The boundary is not in the paper, but in what is done with it afterwards.

The DIY route: class photos, templates, and face generators

If the goal is purely decorative, artisanal forgery is almost trivial. The most repeated recommendation is not a degree, but an orla (class photo): the graduation picture with classmates' faces, the format hung in dentists' offices or lawyers' studies. No one reads it. Everyone interprets it.

The procedure is mechanized. Diploma templates by the millions in search engines. Editing with image software. Face generators to fill gaps in the class photo, with explicit warnings against using real people's photos. And if software skills are lacking, hiring a freelancer for a low fee. The final piece isn't even shown: it's framed and left visible. There it works on its own.

Degrees bought without forging anything

A gray market exists that avoids pure forgery: instead of imitating an official document, they sell a degree that isn't one. Websites circulate offering personalized diplomas with letterheads from invented universities or lax registries, including academic certificates and even names of Spanish universities, never real ones. A self-proclaimed microstate on a marine platform appears as a classic source for these papers.

In parallel, honorary noble titles are offered for ridiculous amounts: a Lord of Glencoe (Ireland) for 36 euros. Another similar offer promoted a pack of bachelor and lord for 200 euros, and a satirical academy offered doctorates "to great figures" for 10,000 euros negotiable, referencing a supposed Doctor Cum Embeleco. These titles are legally useless but legal to acquire. For bragging, they work.

What if you actually earn the degree instead of forging it?

The most repeated response wasn't how to forge anything, but why it's unnecessary. The argument is arithmetic: at 50 and unemployed, four years of study are nothing compared to life already lived, and someone who has read history for years as a hobby arrives with an advantage over 18-year-olds. With a twist: if the degree is taken in person, student life and human contact are recovered, which is exactly what the diploma lie doesn't fix.

Another current summarizes it more dryly: anyone needing to deceive others with a fake degree probably doesn't need it for what they say they need it for. Amancio Ortega is cited as a reminder that primary education doesn't prevent building an empire. And a warning for collectors of cardboard merits: if the paper ends up being shown without anyone asking, suspicion appears before admiration. No one asks for a degree on the street. Whoever shows it is telling something more about themselves than their training.

In the end, the best argument against forgery isn't prison. It's that the only scenario where the paper works —where no one asks— is exactly the scenario where it wasn't needed.