Next time you’re giving an exam, just to be safe, you may want to check whether any of your students’ hairstyles look … different. Police in Hanoi, Vietnam, have uncovered a scheme in which more than 20 students wore intricately wired wigs and shirts to cheat on their college entrance exams. The students were allegedly supported by a cheating “ring” to which they paid as much as 50 million dong ($3,125) for equipment, a training course, and, ultimately, wired-in answers. A weekend raid on the ring, according to police, netted a bounty of cell phones, earphones, and smart cards, as well as eight shirts and five wigs. A police officer noted that the wigs were only used in cases where the students’ hair was too short to cover the earphone. If it sounds like the students were acting out of desperation, that’s because they probably were: Only about 10 percent of students in Vietnam are admitted into universities.
A version of this news article first appeared in the Web Watch blog.