Actually, if you look at just the records of politicians who have
gotten nailed for fake medals or claiming advanced degrees they never
earned, it's pretty clear that they did benefit from the con. *

up here degrees from St Regis were popular. Pay your money, get your
degree. They caught some cops from Chicago PD using them to get
promoted. Some had retired and they're going to get away with it. Ones
on duty are pulling degrees from their files, not sure if anything
else, i.e. demotion to rank not requiring a degree. FBI is getting
involved as there were some Federal employees doing it.

Degrees are pretty easy to check. Most universities will verify if a
person was a student or if they got a degree. Transcripts are
confidential.

One problem I've seen is colleges are way different in type of
students they output. MIT or Cal Tech engineers are not the same as
oh, say U Montana if they give a degree. And the other problem is
departments change over time, not as obvious at the bachelor's level,
but if you go for a PhD you can get screwed if people retire, leave
and the new bozo who's chair brings in losers.