This session will provide information on spotting irregularities and verifying the authenticity of foreign credentials. What is an irregularity and when can we consider an irregularity as a red flag? Often, the definitive answer to this question is country-specific, but this session will provide some general tips and tricks that work with nearly all credentials. We will speak about looking at the biographical data, building an internal reference database, checking for logical error. Next to this, we will give an explanation to several methods that you can use to verify the authenticity of a credential. Some examples of these are verification databases, contacting the issuing authorities, doing a forensic check of the original documents. What are the advantages and disadvantages of these steps, and when to use each one of them?  The session will also include a case study about the role of social media in marketing and selling fraudulent credentials from the Middle East.