US charges 15 Chinese in university cheating scam

Prospective students paid impostors to take entrance exams on their behalf using fake passports mailed from China

The defendants paid impostors to take the Test of English as a Foreign Language (POSED BY MODELS) Photo: ALAMY

 29 May 2015

The United States has charged 15 people from China with fraud and conspiracy over a four-year scam to fake entry tests for elite American universities.

The indictment exposed an elaborate cheating scam that saw prospective students pay impostors to take a test on their behalf using a fake passport mailed from China.

These students were not only cheating their way into the university, they were also cheating their way through our nation’s immigration system,” said John Kelleghan for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) of Philadelphia.

Between 2011 and 2015, mainly in western Pennsylvania, the defendants paid impostors to take the SAT – previously known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test – the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE), under false names, according to the Justice Department statement.

Both the test takers and the people they claimed to be are being charged.

David Hickton, US Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, said the beneficiaries secured admission to undergraduate and graduate schools that are “among our finest educational institutions.”

Mr Hickton declined to name the specific schools, but said that they are located all over the United States. The students also cheated student visa requirements by using counterfeit Chinese passports, he said.

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One expert voiced fears that there were more students – foreign and domestic – who may be cheating their way into college.

“All we have seen is the tip of the iceberg,” said Robert Schaeffer, public education director at Fair Test, a national centre for fair and open testing based in Boston.

He told AFP news agency there had been “many reports” of cheating on the SAT test in Asia, particularly in China, Hong Kong and Korea.

“The pressure, particularly in Asia, to get high scores so that you can be admitted to a US university apparently is so great that some students and their families resort to cheating,” he said.

The defendants are men and women between the ages of 19 and 26 currently living in several cities where universities are located, including Blacksburg, Virginia, home of Virginia Tech and Boston, Massachusetts, home to dozens of colleges and several elite schools.

If convicted, the defendants face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, a fine of $250,000 or both for each count of wire and mail fraud. Conspiracy charges carry an additional five-year maximum sentence.