Police: Would-Be Cheaters Filmed Test as It Happened, Got Answers by Quizzing Students on “Practice” Test
Canadian police have accused two men of attempting to use an almost Ender’s Game-like scheme to cheat their way into a plum medical school admission. Per police reports, while one of the men was taking the MCAT placement test for medical school, he was secretly using “a pinhole camera and wireless technology to transmit images of the questions on a computer screen back to his co-conspirator.”
Then, that co-conspirator, who was pretending to test other students for jobs as MCAT tutors, showed them the test questions, asking them how they would hypothetically solve them. Little did they know that their ‘hypothetical’ answers were being transmitted by phone back to the man who was actually taking the test. Eventually, they figured it all out:
However, the would-be tutors became suspicious because of the poor quality of the images of the test questions, and the fact that they were allowed to discuss the question together before giving [accused co-conspirator Josiah Miguel] Ruben their answers.
When Ruben left the room to transmit some of the answers, the would-be tutors checked online and determined the MCAT exam was being held that day in locations around the world.
They also found evidence on the computer’s hard drives that the owner had been looking into pin-hole cameras and wireless networks.
So the three students called campus security and began submitting wrong answers to the scammers while they waited for the officers to arrive and arrest Ruben.
The two students allegedly behind the scheme have been charged with theft, unauthorized use of a computer, using a device to obtain unauthorized service and theft of data.
(CBC via Boing Boing)
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