The Department of Health, which licenses 300,000 medical professionals, has been given a database of information on the nearly 10,000 people known to have bought the diplomas, Donn Moyer of the department said this week.

One state employee’s name is in the database, but that person isn’t a medical professional, Moyer said. If medical professionals are found to have purchased degrees, they wouldn’t necessarily lose their licenses.

“We still have to have evidence that you’re not fit to practice,” Moyer said.

The state worker who bought a degree didn’t use it to get his job or a promotion, according to the Department of Social and Health Services.

“If somebody did have one of those degrees in their personnel file, and they didn’t use that degree to misrepresent themselves … then we wouldn’t take any action,” said agency spokeswoman Kathy Spears.

Checking a list of 9,600 names of diploma-mill customers against the names of more than 100,000 state and public workers, The Olympian found 94 matches.

But the worker list and the degree buyers appeared to be different people who share the same names.

Government prosecutors have a more-detailed database of information on customers of the diploma mill, but they declined to make it public.

The Spokesman-Review newspaper in Spokane posted the list of customers’ names this week without disclosing how the newspaper obtained the list. The paper found 191 customers who worked in government, including more than 130 in the military, by checking e-mail addresses discovered by prosecutors.

Dixie Ellen Randock, a high school dropout who headed the diploma-mill operation, was sentenced last month to three years in prison for conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud.