Such claims are not new, I remember some politician in EU's PhD was revoked
after 5 yrs someone found it had fake data (yea after 5yrs)....
Some Japanese scientist also had a paper pushed into some high ranking journal and the paper was either accepted or published and then later thrown out for fake info....coz someone couldnt repeat the procedure or didnt get the same results...
So it does happen everywhere...in UK you can pay someone to do your thesis...so its nothing new...
Its a world that really revolves on $$