Lei Shi allegedly ran a site called ScoreTop in Aurora, Ohio. The site sold questions in the GMAT examination which is run by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC).
On June 23 GMAC won a legal judgment against the Scoretop site in federal district court in Virginia. GMAC had accused Scoretop of copyright infringement, saying the site had published ‘live’ GMAT questions — questions that were still currently in use by GMAC, the test’s publisher — and other copyrighted material.
The court awarded GMAC $2.3 million plus legal cost but It is not thought that GMAC has much hope of getting that money. As reported Lei Shi has return to China and has taken refuge in the city of Zibo in Shandong province.
Shi, who took the GMAT himself at least three times in 2002 and 2003, was not represented in court on the copyright infringement case.
The problem is the number of students caught up is now more than 6,000, a far greater number than originally thought.
GMAC has reassured the involved students that only those who knowingly used the Scoretop.com Web site to cheat on the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) will have their scores canceled. Because most top B-schools require the GMAT this is serious stuff.
GMAC is analyzing the hard drive and it vows to cancel the scores of anyone who used the site to cheat on the exam. That could mean rejection for applicants, expulsion for current students, and unspecified sanctions for graduates.
Graduates have threatened to sue GMAC but that is an empty threat. A test-taker must agree to two quite detailed nondisclosure agreements. They might be more successful suing Lei Shi. If only he could be found.
Source: BusinessWeek
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