USC Scams

Since November 2005, many Chinese main stream media have reported the news that USC invested 150 million YMB ($19 million) to build its first oversea graduate school in Tianjin, China. After data mining news coverages, we now know the person behind this event, as well as many other similar scams in China in names of academic collaboration, is a Chinese looking guy using name Dr. Xie Qimeng （谢启蒙） who can be seen in the picture (on the left) signing financial agreement with his Chinese counterpart. Readers are encouraged to Google his Chinese name to find out relevant information on his adventures, some even involve a couple of prestigious Chinese universities, such as Jinlin University and Huazhong University of Science and Technology.


What makes this particular incident distinctive is the fact that they usually operate under names that could be easily confused with legitimate academic institutions, such as Berkeley University (to be confused with UC Berkeley), Southern Columbia University (to be confused with Columbia University) or California Southern University (to be confused with USC), etc. However this time, they operate under the authentic name of the University of Southern California as well as its abbreviated form USC. Therefore, we are skeptical that USC, or some representatives of USC, may actually get involved into this criminal scam. There's also possibility that they were unaware of the incident, and were taken advantage of in a criminal act.


This close-up shot shows the USC representative exchanging signatures with the president of Tianjin University of Science and Technology. If you happen to be a friend or family member of the lady on the right, and if you happen to be a nice person, you should tell her stop embarrassing herself in front of the world. The blogger is no big fan of USC, so he is not going to tell them.:)