Rashad Richey, JD, PhD, EdD, MBA, LL.M
Probably one of the most academically credentialed individuals in American history, according to himself.
Rashad Richey has five doctoral degrees in eight different areas of research (link), he has been awarded a medal by President Barack Obama, and he has invented a device that can cure Alzheimer’s disease, beating an MIT research group to the punch (link).
Wherever he gets the chance, the list of self-professed accolades and descriptors goes on for many paragraphs and includes a dozen or so supposed university degrees.
Rashad Richey is a political commentator on America’s The Young Turks network, also known as the Fox News of the left. He is a radio host with numerous connections in Atlanta’s entertainment business and is a former political director for the Democratic Party of Georgia. Besides that, he is an incessant self-promoter that stands out by his need to continually claim new academic and societal achievements in the most boisterous proclamations possible.
While his claims of grand achievements appear absurd, there are plenty of people who take Richey at face value and a number of politicians, like NY attorney general Letitia James or Vice President Kamala Harris, who both chose to be interviewed by him (link). Richey has over one million subscribers to his Youtube channel and claims 3 million listeners for his radio show. Even the prestigious Carter Center actively associates itself with Richey. (link)
The Original Fake PhD
While Richey has laid claim to seven different doctoral degrees over the years, the exact number he claims at any given time fluctuates between 2 and 5, with his current LinkedIn profile claiming four terminal degrees. When he is forced to pare it down, he mentions just two degrees: A 2020 EdD from Clark Atlanta University, and a 2016 PhD from Scofield Graduate School and Theological Seminary, an unaccredited, unregistered and unlicensed one-man show in Modesto, California (link). It was difficult to find much information on the school precisely because it is unregistered and unlicensed both in the city of Modesto and in the state of California. The school claims to be accredited in India, although the accreditation is not valid in India, only outside of it (link). Based on the lack of any legitimacy at all, this PhD claim from Richey is fake. The founder, president, CEO and only employee of the Scofield Graduate School is arch-conservative homophobe Kenny Rhodes (link). The “school” is run out of a small church and payments are to be made out to the church itself.
Nevertheless, Richey is proud of his degree from the alleged school and the dissertation that he produced there, mentioning it in many places such as his TYT biography (link).
His dissertation was indeed published at the German Grin Verlag (link). A history of Richey’s author page with the publisher shows that he has continually updated his author profile over the years with more recent links to his social media accounts (link). He also lists the thesis in his verified Google Scholar profile (link). It is important to establish that he indeed is the author of this thesis because the contents of his writing are squarely at odds with the persona he portrays in his media shows. The core argument of Richey’s dissertation is that America was founded as a Christian nation. More on that in part 2 of the investigation (link).
Legal Education
Perhaps stemming from the criminal record acquired as a young man, Richey has been keen to obtain formal legal education. He enrolled in Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School in 2020, and was promptly dismissed from the program a few months later. He then enrolled at the Birmingham School of Law, a school not accredited with the American Bar Association. After being unable to meet the academic requirements there, Richey then suddenly claimed to have obtained a Juris Doctor from Renaissance University.
Richey never disclosed where this Renaissance University was, but the only school that meets the description and for which he has left a glowing Google review is the Université de la Renaissance d'Haïti (link), a French-speaking university in an intensely crime-ridden neighborhood of Port-au-Prince that neither offers a Juris Doctor, nor any options to take online classes. While studying at Renaissance, he also claims to have obtained an LLM, a degree they also do not offer.
With his alleged law degrees in pocket, Richey then celebrated getting hired as the director of global legal operations at the Fairness Firm on November 16th 2023, according to an article written by an employee of the Rashad Richey radio show (link). Upon closer scrutiny, it appears that the firm itself was only established, and the website registered days before (link). Richey is listed as the CFO of the newly registered firm. Therefore it appears to have been the case that Rashad Richey simply co-founded the firm and gave himself a new title, rather than being successfully selected from a pool of applicants.
But how did he get the idea to claim law degrees from the obscure and unsuitable Université de la Renaissance? An unaccredited diploma mill, the European-American University (link), that Richey previously used and still claims a degree from, offers to get you a degree from the Université de la Renaissance d'Haïti.
Interestingly, it also lists the Business University of Costa Rica. It turns out that the European-American University is another one-man show run by controversial hard-right figure John Kersey. He also works as a professor at the Costa Rican school, and is the liason for the Haitian school. Kersey’s university appears to launder the entirely unaccredited and worthless university degrees from his own Euro-American “university” with foreign degrees that are marginally recognized universities in third world countries. The degrees are then certified as being equivalent to US standards by California University FCE, a scam operation that is licensed as a kindergarten in California.
Rashad Richey claims no fewer than four degrees on his LinkedIn profile (link) from this scheme between 2006 and 2023. Rashad Richey has associated himself for over 18 years with ultra right-wing conservative John Kersey (link). More on that in Part 2 of the investigation (link).
Professor of Quantum Physics
As if his claimed accomplishments weren’t already stretching the imagination, Richey also purports to be an actual physicist with a Master’s degree in quantum physics (from that degree mill) and a 90-page fact-free dissertation with a bizarre title that he peddles as an Amazon bestseller (link).
He is a professor of physics and the first ever department chair of the newly-minted science faculty at the wholly unaccredited Paris Graduate School (link). The school does claim accreditation, but it is from an entity that does not accredit anything, the California University FCE. And it is registered, but not accredited, with the French government, but as a technical college, not a university. In France, the title of ‘professor’ can only be awarded at a university through a rigorous outside review process. It appears that the Paris Graduate School is an entirely fraudulent outfit that relies on foreigners who are oblivious to the French academic system.
With his questionable reputation as a physicist, Richey surprisingly landed a gig as keynote speaker at a conference of the annual conference of the National Association of Black Physicists in November 2023. He proceeded to imply for several agonizing minutes that he had beaten an MIT research group to the punch with his invention that is the first to cure for Alzheimer’s disease (see video). In the talk, he described his invention:
What I utilized, what I invented was a neurological device, we call it a biomodulation device. But it’s basically a device that goes over your eyes and head like a headband and it emits frequencies in your ear and light gamma eyes. And I have an intra-nasal device connection to a mid light in this way entrained in a particular Hertz. - Rashad Richey
A quick search reveals that these types of devices have existed for a number of years and that the research by the MIT group is at least four years old, long before Richey claimed to have obtained his physics and neuroscience degrees.
Disseminating the false academic claims
Rashad Richey frequently posts news stories on social media about his deeds and accomplishments, many of which are an exhaustive recitation of his resume. It is difficult to find news stories that are not linked to Richey’s talent management and public relations efforts. Richey is the president of rollingout.com, an Atlanta-area entertainment and music news website. The website features dozens of promotional feelgood stories about its own president (link). Another frequent source of news stories about Richey is his own producer, Chris Smith (link), at the WAOK radio show he hosts. He publishes the positive news stories about Richey on the WAOK website audacy.com/waok.
Through open source investigative techniques, Fake PhD Investigations has now uncovered a separate network of fake news websites that Rashad Richey operates.
Mr Richey uses these websites to pour effusive praise on himself while pretending that they are operated by independent third-party newsrooms. The websites are all hosted on the same small server with the IP address 55.87.184.32 (link) and were commissioned under the guidance of Spotlight Communications Group (link).
Spotlight is a one-woman business run by former news reporter Crystal Bui, who also hosts her own personal blog and business websites on the same server, and has appeared as a guest on Richey’s The Young Turks show Indisputable since 2022.
On one occasion, she lists Rashad Richey as the website owner and includes her own firm’s email info@spotlightcommunicationsgroup.com as his email address. Bui appears to use the freelance service websites Fiverr and Upwork to find inexpensive web developers to provide a news website shell that is then populated with purchased newswire content and only a few hype articles about Rashad Richey that contain deliberately false and provably fraudulent information about Richey’s success and achievements. The mainstream news content makes the website appear to be providing legitimate content alongside the false narratives provided about Richey.
Richey then shares links to the fake news articles on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn in order to disseminate the falsehoods.
In the most recent example, Richey claims on The Young Turks Network that he offered to donate money to a parent teacher student association whose fundraiser money was stolen (link), calling out those who had not donated or only forgiven part of the debt. Mr Richey then posted a link to a news article about his purported generosity on his Twitter account.
Richey’s The Young Turks producers had contacted several people involved in the story but not the victim. Fake PhD Investigations contacted the actual victim and found out that Richey had never offered to pay any money. They in fact had never heard from Richey or The Young Turks Network producers and were unaware of the false promise by Richey. The website businessnewstrend.com that published the fake story is part of the network of fake news websites operated by Richey.
In other examples of post from his network of websites:
Richey posts an article of the newyorkinquisitor.com to his social media profile (link), titled “Dr. Rashad Richey, The Man, The Legend, The Broadcaster, The Quantum Physicist”, then thanking New York for the coverage.
Richey posts an article of thelamonitor.com that claims 1 million podcast downloads for his show (link). He claims to be humbled by the article and thanks God for it.
In a LinkedIn post (link), Richey post that he “didn’t see this coming” but is honored by a news article on americanewsnow.us (link), part of his fake news network.
On the fake news website registered to Richey americanewsnow.us, an article claims that he is “one of the most academically-credentialed individuals in American history” (link).
sciencenewswatch.com, linked to Richey, has a section called “Scientists to Know”, which features three articles about himself (link).
Rashad Richey can be linked to using half a dozen advertising and publicity management firms. The amount of people he associates with that offer ghost writing services cast doubt on the authenticity of the accredited degrees he has been awarded: The MBA from Beulah Heights University and the EdD from Clark Atlanta University. One thing about Rashad Richey is clear: This Atlantan is not a trusted name in news.
Part 2 of this investigation deals with Rashad Richey’s homophobic views and his longstanding association with far-right figures (link).