Six suspects, including Iranian and Azerbaijani nationals, were arrested for stealing and selling the questions and answers to the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) exam in Turkey, media outlets reported on Monday.
The suspects allegedly charged "buyers" $2,000 to $3,000 for the questions to the May 7 edition of the exam, which foreign students sit for admission to universities in the United States and Turkey. The Chief Prosecutor’s Office in the capital Ankara launched an investigation after receiving a tipoff about the scheme. The investigation revealed that the suspects were running the scheme over Telegram and named two individuals, one identified as C.M. and the other as M.N., as the suspects who brought the questions obtained in Azerbaijan to Turkey.
The questions were then supplied to buyers in what the network of suspects called "quarantine houses." Searching the addresses where the suspects were arrested, the financial crimes unit of the Turkish police found SAT admission papers, official examination question booklets and a trove of digital evidence.
Police found question booklets in the residence E.G., a suspect who claimed during questioning that he was simply studying with other students who were at his address at the time of the raid. He said that many applicants were already in possession of the questions before the exam. "(Other students) told me that they obtained it via a Telegram group. I did not know they were stolen," he told police.
F.K., another suspect, said it was M.N. who obtained questions and C.M. who sold them. He told police that the questions were delivered to them in a box "which can be opened only with a password." F.K. confessed that C.M. asked him to deliver questions to applicants on his behalf. "He promised to pay me in return but he did not pay," he said, adding that questions were obtained in Azerbaijan originally but the same questions are on the exam in Turkey.
A.K., another suspect, however, said that questions could have been "stolen" from Turkey, claiming that he heard the questions are stolen every year. He added that the questions are sent in PDF format over Telegram as well.
The suspects are charged with theft and defrauding public institutions.
The SAT examination, which tests applicants in mathematics and evidence-based reading and writing in the English language, is held six times a year in Turkey and the marks the applicants obtain are valid for five years.
It is unclear whether the applicants involved in the fraud were seeking admission into Turkish or American universities. Turkey has become a popular education hub for foreign students recently. While some universities ask for SAT scores for admissions, others admit students based on their score in another exam exclusive to Turkey.
Exam fraud is not new in Turkey, which in the past has seen a string of testing tainted by allegations of fraud. The Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) has been implicated in most cases, from civil servant exams to military school admission tests. It is accused of supplying questions and answers to its members to help them infiltrate the public sector and Turkish Armed Forces (TSK).