Certificate Mill Sent Fake Email Claiming Oxebridge Was Extorting Them

Certificate mill operator Ram Kala Verma, who’s run an ISO consultancy, certification body, and accreditation body all at the same time, thought he’d get out of his current problems by circulating a fake email intended to make it appear that I am demanding a million dollars from him.

Verma was reported by a whistleblower after his latest CB, Quality Control Certifications  (QCC), gave an ISO 27001 certificate to the company Thalamus AI. The whistleblower alleged that Thalamus AI was calling around asking for a certificate if a CB grant the certificate without doing an actual audit. The whistleblower claims that QCC then handed Thalamus AI a certificate in only 3 days.

We dug into it further and filed a complaint with QCC alleging a number of ISO 17021 violations. The main sticking point is that QCC claims to have audited a site in Delaware that isn’t even used by Thalamus AI. All online publications by Thalamus AI suggest the company is actually in India, making QCC’s certificate — which shows Thalamus AI using a Delaware address — problematic.

Verma did the usual certificate mill thing and freaked out, calling the complaint “stupid.” I then sent a second salvo of violations at him, while also reminding the IAF that Verma has a past as a known certificate mill operator. Previously, Verma ran the consulting company QEHS Management Ltd., alongside the certificate body Generic Management Services (GMS). That last one is a deep cut, as they were involved in a scam with another certification body, G-PMC LLC, which was brandishing a fake ISO 9001 certificate that had GMS’ logo on it. Verma, at the time, claimed that G-PMC had stolen their logo, so either Verma was lying or it was a case of scammers scamming scammers. Ironically, Verma held actual accreditation from the Romanian body RENAR at the time and then lost it over the G-PMC debacle.

But Verma had already formed the accreditation body “United Ackreditering Services Limited” (UASL), which was later renamed United Assessment Services Ltd. after they realized they spelled the word “accreditation” wrong. Since then, Verma re-formed GMS as QCC, and has been claiming UASL accreditation as a certificate mill for years.

(Fun fact, Verma spells it “accrediation” on his QCC website, because he just can’t seem to get it right, the poor sap.)

After the RENAR mess, Verma was apparently unable to get any IAF member to accredit him, but then got lucky with the Ethiopians. The Ethiopian Accreditation Service (EAS), a full IAF signatory, finally accredited them, but the details of how they did it remain a mystery. As of now, QCC is fully accredited, although it still appears to be operating like a shady mill. Thus, Thalamus AI.

In keeping with certificate mill operators’ inability to be decent human beings, Verma has now circulated a fake email which, he claims, came from me. In that email, I demand he pay me $1,000,000; if he does, the email says, I will remove the reporting about him. Verma then spammed LinkedIn and the IAF with copies of this fake email, calling me a “scammer, blammer, and extortionist,” although I admit to not knowing what, exactly, a “blammer” is. I presume it’s a class of Fortnite characters.

There’s a whole lot of fakery in the open here. First, the email address that Verma claims I used is actually an Indian scam site (“vwhins.com“) that is famous for being used by spammers who want to hide their identity. Per the website IPQualityScore, that domain is ranked as “high risk” and they have “detected a large amount of recent abusive activity originating from this domain. User accounts and applications from this domain are likely fraudulent.”

But why would I use a fake email hosting service and then sign it “Oxebridge?” I’m confused on that part.

Then, of course, there is the poor English in the message, which looks more like it was written by a guy who can’t spell “accreditation” than a published author like me. Notice how in both Verma’s LinkedIn post and the fake email, the word “Compensation” is capitalized. It certainly looks like both were written by the same person.

The real kicker, of course, is why would anyone think a guy who works out of this dump could have $1,000,000? This is QCC’s actual office in Delhi:

Also, I’m not sure why I would extort this clown after I published the articles. Isn’t that something you do beforehand?

Anyway, this is on brand for this type of business. Recall that back in 2020, the Indian certification body TNV Certifications had a similar meltdown after we filed a complaint against them. In that case, we had emails showing TNV was selling consulting alongside certification, and yet they were accredited by the equally shady Indian accreditation body, UAF.

The evidence was clear as day (as you can see above), but none of the oversight bodies took action. TNV rejected the complaint, UAF covered for them, IAF regional body APAC refused to process the complaint, and the IAF did exactly nothing. However, during that scandal, TNV falsely accused Oxebridge of “extortion,” but didn’t appear to understand the meaning of the word. Even the UAF had to step in and shut down that false claim and defend Oxebridge, which must have really pissed them off.

The problem for Verma, however, is that this sort of defamation is a criminal offense in India. I’m already working on getting it reported and will be talking to some attorneys there. I’m not sure taking this much further is worth it, but at least we can see what the law enforcement officials in India think of all this.

Now the complaint against QCC gets elevated to EAS, their accreditation body, so we will see how the Ethiopians process a complaint escalation. So far, they haven’t even answered an email, but it’s early days yet. I’m not particularly hopeful, however.

The IAF could fix all of this if they just did what’s on the tin, but alas, we don’t live in a universe where they actually care about this stuff.