Update: Shayan Anique Akhtar was a minor at the time of publishing this article. The article has been updated to reflect that. None of the facts, allegations, claims or opinions mentioned in this article or related reports have been proven in any court of law.
It is unfortunate to report that Shayan Akhtar, the 17-year-old self-proclaimed world record holder for Youngest Microsoft professional, has made claims that have turned out to be untrue, Microsoft officials told this scribe.
Shayan Akhtar, a student from Okara, recently claimed that he has set a new world record by scoring 998 marks out of total of 1,000 in a Microsoft Professional Certificate programme.
Furthermore, Shayan had claimed that Bill Gates had invited him for a one-to-one meeting in July 2012.
Microsoft officials from Pakistan and the United States, who wanted to remain unnamed, confirmed to ProPakistani that Shayan is fabricating facts and altering communication records to gain popularity for reasons not known to them.
Shayan Akhtar was never invited by Bill Gates, commented company officials.
Microsoft officials also maintained that Microsoft doesn’t keep track of age for its certified professionals anymore. Hence, there’s no point in claiming being youngest or oldest certified professional.
When we asked Shayan about the same, he said that Microsoft could be lying to ProPakistani, and that he was indeed invited by Bill Gates, for which he is visiting the US in December 2012. He said he could show us the email invitation as well. (We will update this post when and if we get the scan of the invitation.)
He also claimed that his name will appear in the next publication of the Guinness Book of World Records for his extraordinary achievement. He was of the view that his certification (in November 2011) was a recent record, which is why his name doesn’t appear in online searches for world records on the Guinness website.
Shayan’s father didn’t take our call.
Microsoft didn’t comment when we asked if company is considering any legal action against Shayan for the propaganda.
It merits mentioning here that the Punjab government was considering honoring Shayan by throwing a ceremony, which of course, isn’t happening now.
It may be recalled that Ammar Afzal, a student from Okara, was involved in such a kind of fraud as well. He had claimed similar kinds of records in various certifications, which were later found to be fake.
Update:
Shayan has tried to fabricate emails, exactly like what Microsoft officials claimed earlier. I received an email from “Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation”. Here is what the email reads:
We’ve just contacted Shayan Anique to confirm his Bill Gates Invitation. He is invited by Mr Gates to visit Microsoft Corporation in November because of the work he had done in the field of Microsoft Technologies like ASP.NET, MVC, .NET FRAMEWORK and WINDOWS PHONE.
He is also a youngest MCPD in Windows Phone and Web Development 4. Although we have sent his world Records Documents for Verification to Guinness. We have also verified his MCP Transcript from Microsoft. It is totally valid.
We will inform you as soon as we receive reply from Guinness.
Your’s Sincerely,
–
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Main Office
PO Box 23350
Seattle, WA 98102
Interestingly, the header of the email suggests that this email was sent to us using a proxy email sender.
Check the screenshot below of the email header:
