Jia Peng, 24, has been sentenced to three months imprisonment in Hong Kong for cheating on the TOEFL. Jia was the “other dude” I mentioned in a post a few days ago about another case of cheating in Hong Kong.
According to court records, Jia hired a convincing lookalike to take the TOEFL for him at a test center in Malaysia. It appears, as in the earlier case, that the scheme was uncovered by the university sometime after a score report was submitted.
I spoke yesterday with a source who has experience being locked up in Hong Kong. They described conditions in the city’s jails as “pretty spartan,” with inmates being kept two to a cell. The same source described the food served to prisoners as “not bad.”
A point I’ve been trying to make here is that some test makers might insist that their on-site tests are far more secure than at-home tests offered by their competitors… all while not being fully aware of exactly how many people are cheating on those on-site administrations.