15 Chinese charged over US exam fraud
Print Edition
FIFTEEN Chinese nationals have been charged with developing a fraud scheme in which they paid imposters to take entrance exams, including the SAT, and gained acceptance to elite American colleges and universities, the United States Department of Justice said on Thursday.
Conspirators were paid up to US$600 each time they used counterfeit Chinese passports to trick test administrators into thinking they were the person who would benefit from the test score, a federal grand jury charged.
Between 2011 and this year, mainly in western Pennsylvania, the defendants paid imposters 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, the Justice Department said. Both the test takers and the people they claimed to be are being charged.
US Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania David Hickton said the beneficiaries secured admission to schools that are “among our finest educational institutions.”
Hickton declined to name the schools, but said they are located all over the US. The students also cheated visa requirements by using counterfeit Chinese passports, he said.
The defendants are men and women between 19 and 26, and living in cities where universities are located, including Blacksburg, Virginia, home of Virginia Tech and Boston, Massachusetts, home to dozens of colleges and elite schools.
“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, Special Agent in Charge for Homeland Security Investigations of Philadelphia.
If convicted, they could face up to 20 years in prison.
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