Sunday afternoon, 14.20 hours. Damrak, Amsterdam. My telephone rings.

"Hello, I’m here. Where are you?"

"Can you see the red coach?"

"Yes, I can see it."

"In two minutes’ time, a blue Seat will drive up, walk towards it."

As he says, a little later, a blue Seat turns up. A bloke unlocks the doors.

"Well, hello."

"Hey, I’m Mario. OK, get in, then we’ll go for a drive."

"I’m not getting in."

"You’re not getting in? Don’t you trust me? I’ve got to keep an eye out for the police, mate. We can’t stay here. The police might think I’m selling cocaine, you see. Here’s your envelope; you owe me eight hundred Euros."

How easy is it to acquire a fake university degree? And what does it cost? I start trawling the Internet for fake certificates and after an afternoon of clicking, I discover a few email addresses for potential sellers. I send emails to a few and eventually two reply.

A degree certificate costs five hundred Euros from diploma-yoel@hotmail.com and his reputation is reliable, he says in his email. "We’ve had experience with producing different degree certificates since 2006 and so far no one’s been disappointed." The competition, diploma_kopen@hotmail.com, is more expensive, demanding eight hundred Euros. Besides, his email states that it’s impossible to get a medical degree certificate – perhaps his conscience bothers him. It also says: "We do not accept any liability for the (inappropriate) use of the purchased product. You should be aware that you bear the sole risk for its use."

Both "companies" guarantee that they deliver certificates with signatures, logos and watermarks that "can’t be distinguished from the genuine article". "diploma-yoel" is even willing to send a draft of the forged UvA Law Degree certificate. If I like it, I can buy it, filled in, with signatures and everything.

As I want to be able to tell a fake from a real one, I make an appointment with Marleen Bakker, at the Student Desk of the Amsterdam Law Faculty. There it is evident that the draft does not bear the slightest resemblance to a genuine diploma. The layout is different, the order of the details is different, the font is different, and the three crosses that represent Amsterdam are missing. The draft also contains words and logos that Bakker does not recognise at all, such as "Testimonial" and the motto "In Dei Nomine Feliciter" (Happily in God’s Name). It takes some time, but then I discover that the motto belongs to the Radboud University Nijmegen.

Conclusion: the producer of this certificate wants five hundred Euros for some straightforward copy-pasting.

I’m hoping that "diploma_kopen" has something better to offer, but he refuses to send a draft in advance. There is nothing for it: I’ll have to make an appointment. I have to go to Amsterdam where I’ll be told to proceed to a more specific location.

When I arrive, I’m rung twice, by different people with ex-directory numbers. The first wants to know whether I have arrived and the second asks whether I know how much the certificate costs.

The blue Seat appears half an hour later, and after some persuasion, Mario agrees to park the car so that we can talk outside. We have to keep walking round Damrak because he won’t stay in one place. I ask him questions as casually as I can.

"Am I breaking the law if I buy a degree certificate which is officially a fake?"

"Er, yes, that makes you a fence. The worst that could happen to you is you could spend three days in a holding cell. That’s not too bad, mate."

"What about you, you sell them?"

"I’m just the courier, you know, I don’t know what’s in here."

"So you don’t make the certificates yourself?"

"No of course not. I just collect your eight hundred Euros. I don’t have anything to do with the rest."

"Do you sell many certificates?"

"Not that many."

"You don’t often get requests?"

"I don’t know - I really don’t know, mate. All I know it that the guys who make them deliver quality stuff. We’ve never had any complaints."

"Manufacturing, buying and selling a fake certificate is punishable under Section 225 of the Penal Code," explains Evert Boerstra at the National Office of the Public Prosecution Service. "The buyer and the seller are both guilty of forgery of documents." Under this Section, both parties could get as much as six years at Her Majesty’s leisure - so much for "three days in a holding cell."

Although you sometimes see a news story about arrested forgers, there are no known cases of forged Leiden degree certificates, according to university spokesperson Caroline van Overbeeke.

The Hague District Court Public Prosecutor’s Office, part of the Public Prosecution Service, confirms her statement. "There haven’t been any cases of fake Leiden degree certificates, there are none pending and no employers have reported any fakes", says press officer Ilse de Heer.

But how much priority does the Public Prosecution Service give to forged certificates? Evert Boerstra says: "Fraud involving certificates is not a separate issue, but that applies to many crimes that do have the police’ interest and the Public Prosecution Service’s attention. If you suspect that a certificate is fake, you can report it to the police, and depending on the prospect of conviction and whether the forgery is thought to be large-scale, the police will contact the Public Prosecution Service to ask whether anything should be done, and if so, what."

I take Mario’s certificate out of the envelope and I can tell immediately that it does not resemble a real one: the layout is vertical rather than horizontal. However, it is printed on good quality paper, the university logo is clearly defined and the paper has both a watermark and signatures. An employer who is not familiar with the layout of a genuine Leiden degree certificate could easily fall for it.

"I’ve noticed something: this certificate has a vertical layout, but I know that a real Leiden certificate has a horizontal layout."

"I see what you mean. But that won’t worry employers, will it now? All they see is a degree certificate presented by an honest Dutch lad, and they’ll assume it’s alright. They’re not going to give you the third degree, are they?"

"But what if there’s somebody working there who went to Leiden and knows that a degree certificate isn’t supposed to look like that. Won’t that be odd?"

"Just say it’s a different issue."

The Nuffic, the Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher Education, also checks the authenticity of certificates and advises employers to ask for the original documents with original, sworn translations. They should also try to be familiar with the contents and layout of the most common documents. "If an employer still has doubts, he can get in touch with DUO or the educational institute concerned," says Nuffic press officer Dirk Haaksman. The certificates sent to Nuffic are not "from science subjects, but the Arts and Humanities, courses that require some level of experience of life too."

Although no instances have been reported to the Public Prosecution Service, DUO says that it received some two thousand requests last year from employers who want to know whether an applicant was registered in DUO.

"The employers still need the applicant’s permission", explains press officer Daniël Blok. "We have a diploma register of everyone who has been awarded a diploma from an acknowledged educational institute.

Employees who are unsure about an applicant or employee can find out whether that person is registered in DUO or not in a few easy steps." It is impossible to register in DUO yourself. Blok adds: "The institute from which you graduated always sees to the registration, and it’s done using automatic systems."

Mario’s claim that a fake certificate could pass as an older issue doesn’t hold either. "The layout hasn’t changed in the last decade", says Leiden beadle Willem van Beelen. "The diplomas have not been altered at all since the introduction of the Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. Besides, all Bachelor’s degree certificates look alike - only the name of department is different, of course."

Although it is clear that the certificate crooks don’t base the documents on a real document, they use convincingly real paper, with or without a watermark. How secure is the paper for degree certificates? University spokesperson Caroline van Overbeeke replies: "The paper is kept under lock and key. We use very special paper with the university blue pre-printed on it for things like the seal and the border. The paper also features the university seal as a watermark and we have our own university font that is, in theory, not available on home printers."

It’s clear that Mario’s printer doesn’t have that font either. The certificate has far more text than a real one, and it’s printed in a different font. And there’s another mistake: the term "Testimonial" printed in large letters on its side is not used on the real thing. I’m not going to buy it and it’s time I told him so.

"This certificate’s wrong, it’s not a real one."

"No, obviously it’s not a real one."

"But it doesn’t even look like one."

"Not a problem, mate! Employers just check whether it has a watermark and some signatures, and whether the logo has definition. And it’s got all that."

"I brought a copy of a Leiden degree certificate with me and it looks very different to yours. I don’t want a certificate that doesn’t look like the real thing. In your email, you said that you couldn’t tell them from the genuine article. This diploma is different."

"So, you don’t want it?"

"No, I don’t want it."

I put the diploma back in its envelope, hand it back to Mario and wish him all the best. His phone rings, he answers and walks off.