It may be a form of fraud. If one misrepresents himself and conducts a business deal, he is defrauding the other party.
I know in Israel one frum politician was put in jail after he listed having received a doctorate. What he did was he went into the reception room of his department in the university, pulled out a sample thesis that had been written by a graduate years earlier, photocopied it, put on a new title page, and then submitted it.
The main mistake he made was that it was written in the feminine gender (in Hebrew), and he was a male. But aside from that, how could anybody think one can write a thesis without a committee, a proposal, an advisor and constant commmittee meetings all along to formulate an idea and to continually gauge progress during the research and writing phases. What about the defense?
I thought this story was one of the funniest I ever read, but it is true.