Another Cheating Scandal

It cost me $13 more dollars to find the damn thing, but...

See paypalorder.pdf first...

and then see 18-13.

Although it doesnt say that they get access to his hard drive, clearly the discovery process included access to some information, and most notably, access to his paypal account. It may well be that they got that during the discovery process. If so, I wonder why they didn't introduce additional evidence from discovery in the docs, but maybe I missed something.

I talked to the district court in VA, and they tell me the case is complete and PACER is up to date. That begs the question, how did they get it shut down? I'm now thinking that they probably just sent a letter to the registrar and had it done.

The only other explanation is that the california case included such data. I've blown another 24 cents finding out, only to be given a PDF that stated:

"THIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS NON-PUBLIC INFORMATION PURSUANT TO THE E-GOVERNMENT ACT OF 2002 AND IS RESTRICTED FROM PUBLIC VIEWING"

I have absolutely not clue what in the heck could be in there that is non public, and I've skimmed through the e-government act of 2002, and I can't find anything in there that would explain that answer. All I can think of is that maybe it contains information from the FBI investigation, which I've discovered is actually ongoing. Thats the last possibility - maybe the data from the server was procured by the FBI as part of their investigation and they may have shared the results ?

And that ladies, is where I stop. $25 into it ... no more money!

Oh and if anyone wants the $13 monstrosity of docs I bought, here they are. The exhibits themselves include a LOT of damning evidence, highlights include the post from headshot guy referenced earlier, a reply from Lei Shin to someone saying "what the heck! You cant post real questions!" basically calling him a Christian bible thumper, the paypal account info, etc.

(sorry its too big to attach here)

The March 08 documents are apparently the last one. I suspect the timing issues are just because of the FBI's involvement, or possibly GMAC waited until the california filing was complete and put together.

As for your math, I'm not 100% sure that's right - because I think scoretop also sold other stuff like one-on-one tutoring, but I could be wrong. I suspect access to the paypal account is likely all they need to track down who paid for VIP access. What I'm really baffled by is why GMAC didnt identify the infringing folks in the suit - at least one - (it came up in the judges opinion as an issue)... its not hard at all to do so.

So many people report their scores in such detail (see the exhibits) "I got a 580, then a 640, then a 740 today"... How many people in GMAC's database exist who just happened to take the test on date X, get a 740, and also happen to have previously had a 640 and 580?
Combine that with the fact that many list the breakdown and I cant imagine that that isn't sufficient to identify one person.

Actually, you should all check out exhibit 3. You'll be SHOCKED. Not just at how insanely BRAZEN it was, but at how much people recalled or copied. I'm talking about people literally writing down entire RC passages or remembering 10 or more math questions in detail!

GMAC's (public) claim that the scheme probably didn't work anyway seems pretty awful wrong too. The scores frankly speak for themselves. Starting on page 17 of 26 in exhibit 3, a guy tells us of how he scored 580.... and then ends up with a 740. Thats a pretty massive leap. If it seems reasonable to you, think of it in percentage terms -- thats someting like 64th percentile to 98th...

When asked how he did it, he says he got 10 Math problems he'd seen before and at least 2 verbal problems - and more that seemed familiar..

Stop and think about that for a second. Can you imagine getting 10 problems you already knew the answer to and even more ? Thats not a small advantage - its not 1 or 2 questions that seem vaguely familiar.... I mean really, thats what, something like 30% of the ENTIRE math section? I forget how many questions there are... was it 37? Imagine having the answer to 30% of that, and not only that - you take, what 20 seconds per? so now you have 70 minutes or so to answer 27 questions? Thats a serious advantage. Other people go even further and claim they saw so many repeats they couldn't even remember. To be honest, it makes me pretty mad. I worked so !@(#! hard for my score.

In any case, in the end, I can only conclude that GMAC has no intention of pursuing these people. If they did, they already would have.

Totally serious. I even tape recorded it.

Heres my take on this cheating episode..

JJ's were live questions and sold as live questions.. All those who paid for these should be penalized.This was till 2006. Most ppl who used this would have graduated or will be graduating this year . I dont empathise with cheats and cheating and the punishment should be severe for those who knowingly cheated and promoted the same.

Now coming to VIP membership, the questions here were sold as questions created by Scoretop team. Now GMAC clains that some of these are live questions . Maybe a handful knew these are live ,they were probably the ones who were paid to post these questions, or answered these.. Many may have not known the same. Their evidence all points to the time when JJS were active and not VIP.

According to me Posting and participating in JJ was blatant cheating. Its also very easy to catch members who particpated in the same.

The VIP membership situation is tricky because VIP participation was cheating by those who knew that these are live questions or posted their exam questions on VIP forum. Now how do you deteremine that , who cheated and who didnt. If a flight is highjacked, its true that all passengers suffer , but its not that all of them become hijackers..

Now coming to the fact that students paid 30$ for VIP membership and they paid to cheat. Is 30$ a detterent, when the questions are sold as additional practice . I dont think many would blink an eyelid to pay 30$ for additional practice for a month, specialy when it is sold as additional practice. Its really not expensive for many to think what theyre getting into... Had the amount been higher , one may have been suspicious, that someone paid that with an intention to cheat.Also scoretop moderator wrote on its website, that sharing any content from OG, or the actual test was not allowed, and the concerned person can be reported to GMAC.Its a surprise they promoted one thing and practiced the other.. Atleast knowing this before hand would have saved so many who are now in a soup, many because they were ignorant. It would be sad that few would have to stay with that tag through out life for no fault of theirs. Now :- Who said "ignorance is bliss ".

Even many of those who took their test , while they were VIP members, may have had an advantage, but what about those who took their VIP membership, but didnt find it useful , or those who purchased the membership but never used it, or those who took the membership, but gave the test much later. None of these could have gained any significant advantage from their membership. Also GMAC mentions that the advantage gained by any student is miniscule, as their databse has more than 70000 questions while only 440 questions have leaked. Again if the advantage is so miniscule, does it make sense to reprimand all site members , will have to be seen.

Now I have a query for GMAC.

GMAC knew bout scoretop JJ since 2003 and got the JJ's off scoretop in 2006 , and they pursued a legal battle agianst scoretop. Now when you know that a site has a poor record, why couldnt GMAC have been proactive in their approach towards the VIP membership. Couldnt they have paid 30$ , had a staff member participate in the forum , shout it out the minute a live question was loaded and immediately catch culprits the very minute they posted live questions. It only needed to match questions with those in its test database . Why has it taken them 2 years to do this .Again GMAC should have announced on its site that scoretop was under scrutiny as it has shared live questions in the past, and particpation on this forum can lead to problems for site members... That would have been an eye opener for many, as the investigation is on since 2006....

This is for those who have labelled certain nationalities as cheats.
Cheating is a human trait, and its sad to label Cinese, Indians, Asians as cheats because they were a majority of the site members . Lets not forget that they are amongst the majority of the MBA applicants, and the site membership reflects the general application trend. In the Olympics , so many atheletes are disqualified due to cheating, does it mean that all their fellow particpants from the same country also used the same methods. Perhaps not..

Personally GMAC has a fight on its hands, the cheats are still active out there.. Perhaps, they need to officially monitor all GMAT sites, and material sold . It should have staff liase with site owners and moderators, and report any noncompliance to GMAC policies, and nip the problem in its bud..

I think a part of the trouble could also be the outsourced test centers . Many of us who have been through IT Certification are aware of cheating through Dumps which are available online, where live test questions are posted. GMAT is also tested in an IT testing environment, in the same testing centers. These centers are also centers for MCSE, CCNA , etc, certifications, that have today have lost their relevance as it is easy for someone to be certified, and have no clue of the technology practically. The defeat the purpose of having the certification in the first place.GMAT must go back to a stricter and perhaps better testing environment. Maybe have it like the SAT, held on certain days during a month. Maybe hold the test in schools / universities only, where they can better limit cheating, than hold a test in private institutions, where the affiliations on the test center employees can be questionable. I personally find it impossible to remember one question and its 4 options after the test . How can someone build a set of many such questions. It looks difficult, and unrealistic, that the site pay someone to pay per question. I doubt that someone can effectively remember an RC, LONG CR AND Sc especially for verbal questions. Maths may still be possible , unless they are carrying some aid like mobile cams , or digital cams etc to record these questions.

Also some testing centers are still using paper sheets for scratch work during the testing. Are the sheets being destroyed , after the test . Are the boards that the GMAC uses for scratch work , effectively erased post test .
Many questions are unanswered and can effectively eliminate some part of the problem.

Post investigation, maybe GMAC should perhaps move out of this outsourced testing environment to one that they monitor. Its not easy to monitor 3rd party testing centers.

BTW , I have a suggestion here . I think some of us can probabably work part time as GMAC reporters. Rhyme you have a great career as a Professional GMAC undercover detective, and some of us GMAtclubbers can participate with u in ur hunt for cheats ... It may add to our EC activites, and perhaps be a novel EC to mention in our MBA schools apps..

I absolutely agree, OG should be inevitable part of every test-takers! But, let's return to copyrights: first page of OG - "No part of this book shall be reproduced.....".

I can go further, let's say I'm CEO Nokia and faces with the threat form Apple iPhone due to its touch-screen technology, that is patented. What should I do? Avoid copyrights lawsuits and lead company to a huge loses? Or encourage all my employees to 'invent' analog of touch-screen technology with low as possible but non-zero risks of copyrights lawsuits? It is critical reasoning from CEO table

Cant say I really want the attention. People's opinions are heated on the subject and I don't really see any outcome other than me pissing off people by writing something official for BW. I'll leave them to their own devices. If they want to offer me a lead investigative journalist job they know where to find me.

A few points here. Let me first stress that I am not a lawyer, and the below is non-expert speculation on the issues:

Regarding the legality of posting questions to forums from the Official Guide or GMATPrep, I'd wonder whether one could make a case that the reproduction of occasional questions constitutes 'fair use'. Under US copyright law (as quoted in wikipedia), "the fair use of a copyrighted work [...] for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."

Quoting further, four factors are explicitly identified as considerations to be applied when evaluating whether reproduction of copyright material constitutes 'fair use':

"1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."

As pointed out in the GMAC memorandum requesting default judgment in the case, ScoreTop "have permitted users to post links that provide copies of entire GMAC test preparation books." That is, they reproduced copyrighted work in its entirety (viz item 3), and presumably damaged the market for the original work (item 4). In addition, ScoreTop charged money for VIP access, and was thus of a commercial nature (item 1). In these respects, gmatclub is different from ScoreTop.

Regardless of whether reproducing GMATPrep or OG questions does constitute a copyright violation, there is the separate question of whether GMAC would have any interest in pursuing legal action.

And to address a couple of factual points:

GMAC pursued action against ScoreTop on three grounds- copyright infringement, contributory infringement (for encouraging others to reproduce copyrighted material) and tortious interference (for violation of the non-disclosure agreement agreed to prior to the test). They did not merely pursue a case for copyright violation. While no damages were awarded based on the tortious interference claim, the judicial opinion did mention that such damages would be 'duplicative' of the damages for copyright infringement. By my reading, the secure nature of the GMAT test also contributed to the decision of the amount of the damages awarded.

Finally, GMAC is a non-profit, not a business.

While your points are valid, and I agree with most of what you say, I do need to disagree somewhat. The attitude from what I gather was that it was well-known what was going on. If you participate in a thread that talk about JJ's, you either will be curious as to what JJ's are, and find out, or stop using the site. I can imagine a thread titled something like " June JJ - Probability ". Now I have not seen the forum, but I would imagine it would be something to that effect? So are you saying that people participating in that forum would not be the least bit curious as to what that was ?? Now I don't want to ruin lives of people who stumbled across the site, hell, even signing up and paying, realizing it was wrong and never coming back. But for people actively participating in the forum, posting live questions OR participating in discussion, it would be highly suspect that these individuals did not know what was going on. It doesn't take long for someone to figure out, even on this site, what OG, or MGMAT, SC, or RC stand for. And if you are paying money for something, you would have a lot more incentive to do due diligence.

I am sure GMAC has studied those forums throughly and could conclude whether there was a reasonable expectation that a new or average user would know what a JJ is.

I thought this would make an interesting though experiment- to see if GMAC could have worked out, from data mining, whether any questions were abnormal. Based on a few assumptions, I arrived at the following (rather long, and possibly completely uninteresting to most!):

• Roughly 20,000 people take the GMAT each month. Half of these, 10,000, take the test in the second half of the month. We'll only look at them.
• 6000 people were allegedly ScoreTop subscribers. Likely more benefitted from the availability of 'live' questions, but I'll go with the assumption that 6000 benefitted for now.
• I think ScoreTop was distributing live questions for four years, though am not sure. In any case, using that assumption, 1500 test-takers would have seen, in advance, live questions each year, or 125 per month. I'll assume all of these took their test in the second half of the month.
• According to some of the propaganda used by ScoreTop to advertise the value of their question sets, there are roughly 1200 questions in the GMAT test pool in a given month. It's unclear whether that's per section, or in total, or even whether that number is at all accurate (GMAC does not disclose the size of their question pool). I'll use that as an assumption- that there are 600 questions in the question pool for each section of the test.
• Then each test-taker sees about 6% of the total question pool on each section. I'll assume there is an equal probability of seeing any given question- not a valid assumption, but I need to make the analysis simple.
• For someone to see about 7-8 questions from JJs repeated on their real test (as some bloggers report), ScoreTop must have had roughly 20% of the question pool available in the JJs.
• Now, to analyze how you would expect test-takers to perform on a given GMAT question, it's important to understand how the CAT works. The test is designed to adjust the difficulty of questions until it reaches a point where test-takers answer 60% of questions correctly, 40% incorrectly (I'd note that some sources cite the figure at 50%, which is only correct for a test without answer choices; the GMAT accounts for the possibility of guessing correctly). I'll take this as a baseline- a legit test-taker should answer a question correctly, mid-test, with about a 60% probability.
• Suppose JJ-users answer previously seen questions with 100% accuracy.
• By the assumptions that each test-taker sees 6% of the pool, that we have 10,000 - 125 = 9875 legitimate test-takers, and 125 JJ users, and that each question is seen by an equal number of test-takers, we arrive at the following: a given QN that appears in the JJs will be shown to approximately 0.06*9875 = 592.5 legitimate test-takers, and 0.06*125 = 7.5 JJ users, and to 600 people in total.
• One would expect 360 correct answers to such a question. Instead, one would receive 0.6*592.5 + 7.5 = 363 correct answers.
• By binomial probability, the standard deviation around 360 is sqroot(600*.6*.4) = 12. That is, if there were no cheaters, one would expect, 68% of the time, that the number of correct responses would vary from 348 to 372 on a given question. For the number of correct answers to be different by only a quarter of a standard deviation is immaterial as statistical evidence- you'd see, on a completely fair question, 363 or more correct answers 40% of the time.

So my guess is that it would be difficult to identify problematic questions by data-mining. I've needed to make a lot of assumptions, however.

The first rule of reading the letter is that you are not to discuss the letter. The second rule of reading the letter is...

Dr phil, is that you?

Saw that River posted this on the other forum- just thought I shall pass this on...

https://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/jun2008/bs20080623_153722.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_news+%2B+analysis

EDIT: Merged to keep all discussions in one place.

I reported it first to gmatclub!

So GMAC finally decides to get off their lazy butts and do something about this. Thank God!!!! Now give me the seat of the cheater the bschools are going to expel. Everyone, add 1 to your gmat percentile. Except for you 99th percentiles!!! Don't be greedy!

Small advantage? Inconsequential? Yea, riiiiiiiight. In GMAC's infinite wisdom to make more money by making the test available every month, they opened the door for cheaters to put together a game plan and effectively help cheaters with money.

so that is why the percentiles decreased!! That would be a nice benefit kidderek. I'd like another percentage point.

Anyway I'd hate to be the cheaters that are waking up reading this. That's got to put a damper on their day. If you are that dumb to buy questions, let alone using your own name, then you deserve not to be in business school.

How about GMAC set up their own service pretending to offer "live" questions but they really just use it to gather their names:)

I have never heard of that site before, did you guys know about it?