For $6,000, You Get a Pencil With the Answers Included

摘要

It was a sweet little scam, as the Feds tell it. Prospective students respond to an ad promising a "unique" method that guarantees high scores on several standardized tests required for entry by most graduate schools. They have to pay up to $6,000 and get to Los Angeles. On the day of the exam, confederates in New York take the test and, taking advantage of the three-hour time difference, phone the West Coast ringleader with the answers. In L.A., the paying clients then receive the answers, carefully inscribed in a secret code on the side of pencils. The guarantee is good: they ace their tests.