Many of the better grade degree mills with access to high quality printing presses are based in the UK and they are owned and operated by Hong Kong Chinese that got out of HK and obtained UK passports. Hard copies of originals are routinely grabbed in places like Guangzhou or Shenzhen and they are then taken by hand over the border into HK while the unknowing FT waits for their passport and other documents to come back as part of the supposed visa process. After they collect images, top quality scans, etc., they take the documents back to the mainland and turn them in and process visas for the FT. The FT has no clue what has just transpired with their credentials and while that was going on, their passports were also used to illegally import cars at the port in Guangzhou as well.

Source: United States Department of State, United States Department of Justice, US Homeland Security, former CIA case officer previously assigned to China now working in the private sector, 2 employees of a company called http://www.nd-center.com, and the US Department of Education Office of Inspector General.

The USA does in fact have several private schools that may not meet certain criteria, but in order to be in business at all, they must in fact meet some level of criteria or they can not open their doors. In the USA you have too many agencies to keep an eye on those outfits. State level department of education, teacher's unions, US Department of Education, US Department of Justice, ICE, US Postal Inspection, state level job training and employment related agencies, etc.

A friend of mine in the USA has a fairly successful ESL school. His school is not accredited, but he is a licensed teacher with a doctorate in education, and he does issue certificates of completion for students that complete his program, many of which need ESL skills for various reasons. He maintains a valid business license and he also submits reports to the state education bureau concerning what he does in his school, but they are not going to accredit him as a "school". He does however meet enough of some form of guidelines in order to legally obtain visas for foreign students to study there and he has been in business for...I don't know, maybe 15-years.

As for getting degrees, licenses, certificates or permits for cash, and not doing much of anything to earn those credentials, the same could be true in all 50 states of the USA with regard to various forms of licensed occupations. In many states a security guard can carry a loaded firearm with 32 hours of training and they are then "certified" to have lethal force capability.

Your Wiki run lists many degree mills. That's true. The difference is that most of the documents coming out of several of those nations would easily be spotted as fakes in seconds, whereas the quality of what is coming out of the UK is virtually impossible to dismiss as a fake compared to a real document in a side by side comparison. If it is some bogus TEFL document, who cares? But if it is a faked pilots credential as was the case in China recently with some 200 fake pilots flying commercial aircraft, or a physician's credential, then it is a major problem.

I used to have a few licenses for this, that, and the other thing in the USA as well. I held a car dealers license for California, a real estate license, a notary public commission, and a gun permit before I left the USA. None of those took too much to earn either. It was basically a cash and carry situation too. I also had a license to take fingerprints for immigrants. Another nice little cash generator and a no brain required type of license I might add.

States in the USA want to make money any way they can. Pretty soon in the USA you'll need a license to take a dump and a license to cross the street and of course, you'll see 101 schools open up to provide that service to "certify" people for that.

In about...2000, maybe 2001 I guess just outside of the old US Embassy for those of you that are that old....and can remember that, the Chinese used to sell fake US passports, stolen passports, fake FBI credentials etc. They did this in plain view during regular business hours and I never once saw anyone from the embassy bust a nut to stop it.

The difference between a BS fake degree from someplace like Pakistan and the UK as an example are seals, water marked paper, inks, fonts, colors, shading, texture, smell, and the feel of authenticity. I have seen a few degrees from Australia in the past that I was convinced were 100% fake and in fact they were 100% real.

Some colleges in the USA generate some bad looking real degrees which are almost an embarrassment to hang on the wall.