nationwide ring that used stand-ins to take English-language proficiency exams for 130 foreign students, enabling the students to stay in the United States, was broken up yesterday, federal prosecutors said.Posted on 05/08/2002 1:03:18 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
nationwide ring that used stand-ins to take English-language proficiency exams for 130 foreign students, enabling the students to stay in the United States, was broken up yesterday, federal prosecutors said.
In raids in 13 states and the District of Columbia, they said, 58 people were arrested, mostly students who had paid someone else to take the exams for them.
The test is required by many colleges and universities as proof that foreign students are complying with the terms of student visas under which they entered the country.
"This type of document fraud is a threat to our national security," said Michael Chertoff, head of the criminal division in the Justice Department.
The case involved tests taken in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.
The case was filed in Federal District Court in Newark. The United States attorney for New Jersey, Christopher J. Christie, would not say whether the investigation had uncovered any links to terrorism. But Mr. Christie said the arrests were part of an overall strategy of arresting potential terrorists before they could strike.
The test scheme operated from May 1999 until last month, the authorities said. In it, they said, a fraudulent test taker would appear at the test site with documents in the name of the student who had to pass the examination. The test taker would be photographed and would direct testing administrators to mail the results to a post office box in Moreno Valley, Calif. The box was controlled by Mahmoud Firas, whom the authorities described as a mastermind of the scheme. Mr. Firas, 36, of Riverside, Calif., and Begad Abdel-Megeed, 21, of Alexandria, Va., were named in criminal complaints as the main test takers.
The last thing the exam master is going to do is stare into some black dude's face and compare it to what's on the ID card that's presented.
Good news, madfly. Thank you.
Nobody ever compared the photos of the students to the test takers???!
Dittos. We need to find good neews wherever we can these days. Thanks.
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