Degrees are checked by the authorities before they grant a work permit. Fake degrees, a copy of a real degree from a real university, or life degrees, a piece of paper from a made up university are found out at that point.
There is a database they use that at the first step, if the university isn't on it, it doesn't get any further. If it is, they check the transcripts.
Submitting a Life Degree is useless, submitting a fake degree from a real university is presumably illegal and fraudulent.
It was different before apparently, but then there were just too many cases of teachers being arrested for other crimes and it being made public that the schools had hired them with fake degrees, so everything got tightened up.