Students who took the entrance exam to Thailand’s Rangsit University College of Medicine last weekend will have to redo their work on May 31 and June 1. This is because three students were caught cheating in a next-level way. They used high-tech devices provided by a gang.
According to the Bangkok Post, the three cheaters each wore a smart watch, and got answers from the gang funneled through those watches during the exam. A private tutor organization was also involved in this extremely involved plot to get into medical school.
Here’s how everybody involved pulled it off:
The gang sent three proxies, who each wore a pair of glasses with a hidden video camera, to sit the exam. They used the spy glasses to film the questions and then immediately left the room after 45 minutes, the minimum time requirement for applicants to finish up and exit the test venue.
The proxies then downloaded the video footage to their laptops and emailed it to the tutoring institute, where a team prepared answers which were then sent to the three students who were wearing smart watches.
Yet despite this elaborate ruse, these students were soon caught. According to the Associated Press (via ABC News), test monitors found the first two watches on Saturday, then the third watch and the glasses on Sunday. All of the students involved had paid around $23,000 to the private tutoring institute for guaranteed admission into the College of Medicine.
Cheating like this is unprecedented. “We’ve never found cheating of this level — involving high-technology,” university official Kittisak Tripipatpornchai said. I’m sure with smartphones and other technology though, things like this will get a lot more common.
(via Bangkok Post and Associated Press)