Abstract
<jats:p>Diploma mills create a global market in fraudulent credentials that strips degrees of teaching, assessment, supervision, and recognized accreditation. Operators of these diploma mills imitate legitimate higher education institutions (HEIs) through academic language, polished branding, and false claims of accreditation. Public advisories warned that many students lack practical ways to distinguish illegitimate diplomas from genuine ones, especially across borders where verification systems are unalike each other. The harms attributed to diploma mills accumulate across the higher education ecosystem. Students lose money, time, and dignity, sometimes after acting in good faith. Employers face higher verification burdens, longer hiring timelines, and greater risk in regulated roles. Legitimate HEIs carry reputational damage when fraudsters impersonate their names, seals, and websites, and when employers begin to treat online degrees with suspicion. Although diploma mills are usually a law enforcement problem, HEIs that remain silent against these nefarious operations or fail to help the authorities, are complicit in the fraud. The Complicity-to-Accountability Framework (CAF) proposed in this chapter positions HEIs as stewards of credential integrity through verification, warning, reporting, cooperation with regulators, and transparent audit routines.</jats:p>