In May 2015, I completely finished my work in the United States, the day after I returned to China, Ming Jun called me, said to give me a reception, invited me to “Kempinski” dinner.
Ming Jun is my high school classmate, and I have been in touch with him occasionally over the years. In my impression, Ming Jun’s family’s economic conditions have not been too good – parents are laid off workers, the father is many years sickness. However, Ming Jun not only had excellent grades since childhood, but also had an exceptional talent for languages, so he was admitted to the English department of the best local university after the entrance examination.
Since college, Ming Jun has been working as a tutor outside of school to earn money, although the income is quite a lot among his peers, but in addition to a small part of the money left for himself as school fees and living expenses, most of it is filled into the medical expenses of his father. After graduating from college, I heard that he went to work as a teacher in some English training institution.
And this time, he invited me directly to the “Kempinski” dinner, which is really some unexpected.
We were happy to see each other after a long time, and he insisted on ordering a few more bottles of wine, which I could not persuade. During the meal, Ming Jun casually chatted, said his parents are old, the old house is too small, living in a very inconvenient, I worked for a few years to save some money, want to buy a larger house some time.
“Is there enough money?” I asked.
Although we are not here than the first-tier cities like the North, but the price of housing in the country is also considered the forefront, the city’s larger house, 7 figures is also to be. Ming Jun’s decision surprised me a little.
“Enough, these years saved some. I calculated the other day, in the suburbs of the city to pay a down payment of about 150 square feet should not be a problem, and there are still hundreds of thousands of dollars in the balance.”
“Where did you get the money?”
Ming Jun picked up a glass of wine and took a sip, and only after a moment said, “Or because of some rather special opportunities …… did some …… did some work on behalf of people’s exams, and saved some money.”
I froze for a moment, Ming Jun is not surprised at my reaction, just smiled, then poured himself another half cup, told me about his “gunman” before and after.
1
In April 2010, due to the failure of the professional course, Ming Jun failed the exam, after some weighing, he decided to work hard for another year.
In terms of living, it was not a problem, after all, he had several English tutoring jobs at the same time, and a few thousand dollars a month. The biggest difficulty is accommodation – because of graduation, the original school dormitory is definitely no longer available.
Although Ming Jun is a local, his family of three has been crammed into a small house of less than 40 square meters since he was a child. It was an old house from the 80s, with one room, the bedroom was his parents’, and he always slept in the living room. As he grew older, it was still inconvenient to live at home. After repeated consideration, Ming Jun decided to leave home and live in the house of an acquaintance, Zhao Lei.
Zhao Lei’s parents are always away on business, and the house is spacious enough to welcome Ming Jun’s arrival. But at that time, Ming Jun always felt embarrassed, so he usually tried to leave early and return late, just hoping that he would not give more trouble.
At that time, Zhao Lei is preparing to apply for graduate school in the United States, before and after nearly a year of tossing and turning, finally considered everything is ready, only missing the test. Zhao Lei’s English is really not good, encounter GRE such for English vocabulary requirements to high to the unfeeling test, really do not dare to relax in the slightest. Therefore, although always living under the same roof, the two people do not even meet several times a day, even occasionally at home to meet, Zhao Lei is also a sad face, after a hasty greeting, turn your head and go.
The last one to break the silence was Ming Jun, perhaps simply because of the sense of trepidation after being favored, anyway, finally one night, after a greeting, he called Zhao Lei who was about to turn around and go back to his room: “Brother Lei, how is the exam preparation?”
“How else?” Zhao Lei laughed helplessly, “How is my English level, don’t you know? I’m happy to see that the Verbal (the grammar part of the GRE) is 500.”
(Editor’s note: Before August 2011, the GRE was scored at 800 points for grammar and math, and 6 points for essay; after the new GRE reform, it’s 170+170+6.)
“How about I help you?” Ming Jun blurted out.
“You just don’t give me a tutorial, class I don’t know how many sections, useless.”
“That’s not ……” Ming Jun weighed his words, “Do you remember, before several students felt …… that the two of us at first glance still look quite similar?”
“You want to be a gunman for me? No problem, right ……” Zhao Lei was a little shocked.
“It should not be a big problem …… where you GRE is tested? This school?”
“No, I signed up late and didn’t line up for our school’s test center. To go next door to the test center of the University of Finance test.”
“Cai Da? That’s no problem. I also took the exam at the university’s test center, where the invigilation is very loose, and the invigilators are basically old men and women in their 70s and 80s, probably their retired professors, who don’t know us anyway. I will directly take your ID card, student ID card and pass to go over the line, and do not even have to do a fake card.”
“That’s fine! Then my ‘American dream’ will depend on you!” Zhao Lei thought for a moment and said aloud.
“I’ll try to help you get high, but to be honest, I’ve never actually taken the GRE. don’t scold me if I’m not satisfied with the results.” Ming Jun reminded.
“An English major with a high level of talent and a near perfect score on the Specialized Eight, how can you do better than me?”
“How about you give me the best goal you expect? I’ll prepare for this goal.”
“It’s definitely better to be as high as possible. But don’t get a full …… score or it will look too fake.” Zhao Lei said. Since the admissions committee of the American Academy of Sciences rarely gives a green eye to students who can get a perfect score on a test like the GRE, they will instead consider such people “nerdy” or “suspected of cheating”. So, candidates tend to prefer their scores to fall one step away from a perfect score, “Say …… how much should I pay you?” He asked again.
“No money, just think of it as my thanks for giving me a place to stay.” Ming Jun said, “This time feel white food is really not good, help you my heart also comfortable point.”
2
On the day of the exam, Ming Jun was still discovered, but the person who caught him was not the invigilator.
At first, as he guessed, the invigilator simply checked Zhao Lei’s documents and let him into the examination room. Ming Jun heart a stone to the ground, so that more than 3 hours to do extra smoothly.
After turning in the paper, Ming Jun hurriedly left the examination room. But what I didn’t expect was that he had just walked out of the exam building when someone next to him flew over, “Brother, stand-in for the exam, right?” The other party lowered his voice and said.
Ming Jun felt a sharp jerk in his chest – he later told me that he felt his heart was going to stop beating – and the retort came out subconsciously: “Who are you, what are you talking about? “
“Relax brother, we are all peers, I do not have to report you.” The other party is not angry, still said softly, “real candidates are nervous when taking the test, there will be changes in their demeanor, like you from the beginning of the test to the end of the paper has been so calm, nine out of ten is a peer, the old man in this business is easy to see. Brother new dry this, right? I do not mean anything else, just ask you how much to go this trip?”
“I didn’t ask for money,” Ming Jun thought for a moment, since it was seen, might as well be honest, “I’m just helping my friend, how much do you charge for doing this at a time?”
“The other side opened five fingers, “TOEFL IELTS is cheaper, about 30,000. If you want to do it, the source of customers, fake documents and so on will help you arrange, you just test to get the draw line.”
“So what if you guys get caught here?”
“That’s a few.” The man seemed to see Ming Jun’s hesitation, thought, from the school bag pulled out a crumpled book, quickly wrote a few words, and then a tear down into Ming Jun’s hand, “If you want to do, you can contact this qq.”
The exam results came down, and the final score was really similar to what Zhao Lei was expecting – a perfect score in math, needless to say, and a high score of 760 in literature, which is a step away from a perfect score.
That night, Zhao Lei invited Ming Jun to have a good meal, the two of them drank a little dizzy, during the seat, Zhao Lei lowered his voice and asked: “Do you know how much it costs to take this kind of test in the market?”
“Last time I met a ‘gunman’, asked, said 50,000 a time, they also want to pull me into the gang.”
“So much!” Zhao Lei shouted in surprise, “Dude, you’ll get rich doing this in the future!”
“No, no,” Ming Jun hastily shook his head to deny, “I don’t think it’s good to do this kind of thing, so I didn’t agree.”
Ming Jun told me, in fact, at first, he did feel that it was not good to be a “gunman”, instinctively rejected. But the conditions at home can not let him turn a blind eye to such an “opportunity”, “my father’s health is particularly bad at that time, the family especially need money. If not really helpless, I should not have entered this line. He said.
However, he really did not want to join the proxy test agency, because even if you go to the test, not only to bear the full risk, but also by the agency to pump forty to fifty percent of the water, the cost is “quite some not worth it” only. “I thought at the time that if I were to find my own clients, I could net 30,000 to 50,000 for an exam. The student expenses are not much, as long as a small do five or six, graduate school years of money will be all there.” Ming Jun later told me so.
Soon, Ming Jun put up his “ad” on Renren and Qzone, the words were copied from the agency’s website, roughly “high score gunman, honest substitute exams, full refund for not getting the required score” and so on, nothing new, thinking about it The company’s main goal is to provide a comprehensive range of products and services to the public.
3
At the end of 2010, Ming Jun’s “business” was not really good for the past six months.
Although Ming Jun himself is only ordinary-looking, but really to find and he “looks like” people, but also not many, plus he is not willing to do “business” outside the local. In addition to the free help to Zhao Lei that time, a total of six months to go to the examination room to run a trip or two, although the money is not much, but at least to rent a small house or more than enough. Therefore, as early as after he got the first “income”, he moved out of Zhao Lei’s house. One to review their own clean, the second is also considered the end of this “fence” life.
According to Ming Jun himself, in that “basically nothing to do” six months, he did not realize that this particular “part-time job” would bring about any changes in his life.
Every day, he went to work as a tutor for a few hours during the day, and returned to his rental house at night to read a book by himself. If it wasn’t for the QQ that suddenly lit up, he would have forgotten about the “job” he was doing.
“Hello, I saw your ad on Renren.” The person on the other side opened the door.
“Hi, I only take local tests. TOEFL 30,000, GRE 50,000. If you don’t get a satisfactory score, you can get a full refund.” Because no “customer” has come to the door for a long time, Ming Jun was still a bit confused.
“I don’t take the test, we are a proxy test agency.” The other side replied quickly, “We found your ad on the Internet and wanted to ask if you would like to join our team. You only need to go to the test center to take the test, the other including looking for customers, do documents, arrange the test site, after-sales, we are all one-stop agency.”
“How to share?”
“The company’s main goal is to provide a comprehensive range of products and services to the public. “The company has a wide range of services, from graduate English to TOEFL, IELTS, GRE, and even the more specialized GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) and LSAT (Law School Admission Test). In addition, sometimes we also recruit “shooters” directly. This time, he found Ming Jun, who saw his “advertisement” and came to pull him in.
“I think your 40% draw is a bit high, after all, the risk of being caught I have to carry myself.” Ming Jun thought about it and still said honestly.
“That’s impossible, our company has never had anyone get caught in the country.” The agent told Ming Jun that the business of doing the test on behalf of the test, not only contact the customer and the “gunman”, and then according to the test time to send people into the test center even if it is done, the operation of the work is equally important: many “test agency” will be in the local special training some of their own The “relationship test center”, where the invigilation will be relatively loose, “we do not want you to be caught when the test, after all, business to make, we have the money to earn, so up and down need to play.”
Of course, like this “good opportunity”, but also not just get. After Ming Jun agreed to “join”, the agent did not rush to give him business, but first sent him a few sets of questions, he carried out a “touch test”.
“They are the last few questions.” The company’s main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers. In order to test whether the “gunman” is competent, the agency will specially prepare the latest exam questions to test. And, because of the special nature of this “job”, the agency’s requirements are extraordinarily high – “at least two of the three sets of questions require a perfect score, and the other set is wrong within two channels. But this is not difficult for Ming Jun, after he handed in the answers to the three sets of questions, the agent soon sent a notice that he would start “arranging business” for him in the near future.
Ming Jun later said that he was hesitant at first, but after joining, he found that it was indeed the same as the initial solicitation, business, documents handover, the agency staff and he contacted a single line; even after the test “replacement fee”, are the person who found him, face to face cash settlement, “the agency said The most important thing is to have a good understanding of the situation.
As for the substitution project, “gunmen” can decide their own “intention to take orders”. The company’s main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers. The remaining items are relatively much better.
3 years of test substitution career, he earned a suite
After all, it is a foreigner’s exam, and if you are caught cheating in China, you will be blacklisted in most cases, but you will be denied entry to your country for a few years. This Ming Jun simply do not care – because of family reasons, he has never had any luxury to study or travel abroad.
“And for this kind of exam, even if I cheat, the big risk is not on my side.” Ming Jun told me. He later learned that cheating on such standardized exams related to studying abroad, the “gunman” actually does not have to take much risk at all. Because of the “connection to the test center,” cheating is actually very difficult to be discovered on the spot.
Even if the student is punished by the U.S. educational testing agency, or even expelled on the spot and sent back home, it is the student who paid for the “gunman”; the “gunman” is nowhere to be found, and even the money will not be recovered – by that time, the business is already over – even if the customer is upset and wants to call to negotiate, the answer is probably just an electronic tone that says “The number you have dialed is not available”.
In the days to come, the agent will provide some “alternative customers” to the “gunmen” from time to time, marking out the test time, test site and test items for them to “take orders”. After “taking the order”, the agent will contact the “gunmen” offline once before the exam and give them the fake documents needed to take the exam. After the exam, as long as the score meets the customer’s expectations, the agent will contact the “gunman” again offline to pay.
After receiving a few orders, Ming Jun found that the matter is actually far simpler than imagined, and the agent’s “relationship exam room” check, as promised before, every time is perfunctory. After the bottom of the heart, Ming Jun simply did four or five times in a row, but when he was ready to do the next time, he found that his reception application was rejected by the agent —
“The agent called me specifically to say that I should not receive too often, and it is best to control it to 1 to 2 months 1 time. It said that it was easy to arouse the suspicion of the invigilators if I took more exams, and that ‘1 time in 1 month was almost just right’.”
4
By mid-2011, Ming Jun received a call from an agent asking if he would be willing to take an “overseas order” – that is, to go to an overseas test center to do a substitute exam.
Around 2010, it was the time when undergraduate study in the U.S. had just started to boom. For high school graduates expecting to apply to the U.S., a TOEFL transcript alone is a bit thin. If you can add a good SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) score, which is an important reference for college admissions committees in the U.S. to evaluate students applying for admission, and is generally known as the “American College Entrance Examination”, you will have significant leverage.
However, the SAT does not have test centers in mainland China, so every test time, in addition to the nearest Hong Kong and Taiwan, test centers in neighboring countries such as South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines are also crowded with test takers from China. And they are the key potential customers of “overseas single”.
The agent told Ming Jun, “overseas single” price is 100,000 yuan per single, in addition to doing fake passports more than 10,000 yuan, the rest is still in accordance with the ratio of 4:6 share, as for the “gunmen” abroad required visas, airline tickets, accommodation and other expenses, all by the The “employer” all inclusive. So, a “single overseas” is equivalent to more than 50,000 net income plus a free trip abroad. Ming Jun did not hesitate to agree.
But surprisingly, after receiving Ming Jun’s reply, the agency did not immediately agree, but offered to let the staff to meet with him again, which had never been done before.
After the meeting, the agent told Ming Jun that the SAT was for high school students, so if the “shooter” looked too mature, there would be complications, so he needed to meet with the agent again to confirm the test as a “double insurance”. The agent concluded that with Ming Jun’s appearance, claiming to be a high school student was “not a big problem”. Before leaving, he did not forget to remind Ming Jun to apply for a passport as soon as possible, because “we will soon arrange for you to ‘take orders’.
The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to its customers.
Although the “gunmen” need to bring fake passports into the examination room when the examination, but the use of fake passports through customs is never. Therefore, the “gunman” will bring one real passport and one fake passport, one for himself with a tourist visa, and the fake passport will be hidden together with other fake documents (SAT exams generally require two different photo IDs) until the time of the exam.
Ming Jun said that he could not help but be afraid every time he entered the country to go through customs.
Because the border staff will sometimes randomly carry out random baggage checks, in case a fake passport is found, I’m afraid you have to eat. Therefore, when entering the country, he always hides his fake passport at the bottom of the backpack he carries with him, not so much to avoid inspection as to give himself a peace of mind.
Compared to the trepidation of going through customs, the information check by the invigilator in the examination room was nothing. Ming Jun said he still remembers the first time he did the “overseas list”, the invigilator went around the examination room and from time to time went through the documents on the candidates’ desks. When the invigilator opened his own fake documents, even though he was no longer a “novice”, he was still so nervous that both hands were stiff and even his body was not very obedient.
Fortunately, the invigilator finally did not see anything unusual, because the fake passport is really too realistic, not only the “visa page” on the fake visa, immigration stamp everything, and even the whole fake passport are specially made old, if not by the border control officers to check the immigration records, it is impossible to find a problem.
And, even in case the “gunman” exposed identity, often does not mean that everything is lost – because the “gunman” also has the last “killer” – bribery examiners.
Bribes don’t always work out, so when arranging for a substitute exam, the agent will have the client intentionally choose an exam center in a Southeast Asian country, such as Vietnam, Thailand or Cambodia, when registering for the exam – for the obvious reason that examiners in these countries are indeed more difficult to resist the temptation of a lucrative bribe.
“Agents will remind us that it’s a good idea to bring a few hundred to a thousand dollars in cash close to us when we enter the exam room, just in case. But it’s true that there are generally loose checks there, so although I bring money every time, I’ve never had the opportunity to use it, and I’ve never seen anyone else get caught.”
As the “overseas single” pay is significantly higher, Ming Jun soon completely abandoned the domestic test replacement “business”, concentrating only on overseas. When the agent learned of his decision, he immediately told him that the “overseas business” had just started and was short-handed, so he was advised to “do a few more orders as appropriate”. But Ming Jun still refused, because at that time he had already enrolled in graduate school, worried that too frequent substitution would affect his studies, or at most “only once a month”.
Gradually, just like the first time he was recognized by his peers, Ming Jun himself has learned how to distinguish his peers in the examination room.
“The first time you get a paper, you’ll be able to tell who’s taking the exam and who’s taking the test. The real candidates even if the psychological quality is good, well-prepared, the kind of temperament on the sense of tension, are completely different from the test.”
Perhaps because the process of substitution is really too boring, so after the scene, Ming Jun will also go to find peers to chat quietly. “I also talked to them to know, this globalization of the standard examination, although it seems very strict, but in fact there is still quite a lot of room for manipulation ……”
According to the “peers”, Chinese students generally have two choices if they want to get a high score that is not in line with their academic ability for this standardized study abroad test.
One is to memorize the “machine scriptures”: In the case of the SAT, for example, the College Board (the organization that organizes, composes, and scores the SAT) generally updates the question bank once a month at regular intervals around the world. Domestic study abroad training schools will send someone (usually a teacher from the training school) to fly overseas to take the test several times at the first time of each question bank update, then memorize the questions of each test and compile the memorized questions into a book after leaving the test center. This compiled set of questions is called the “machine scriptures”, and the latter students only need to rely on the memorized “machine scriptures” to take the exam before the question bank is updated.
“The most important way to take advantage of the “machine scriptures” is to collect them, but he does not see many people who come purely to collect them. The reason is that compared to the “shooters”, these people are after all using their real identity to take the test, there will be more places to choose from. Only the “gunmen” will all be crowded in Southeast Asian countries in the examination room, scared to complete the “hourly” more than 10,000 “job”.
5
The special “part-time job” of Ming Jun has lasted for more than 3 years. early 2014, when he completely left the industry, he has always maintained the frequency of receiving a single every month. He didn’t tell his parents about his job as a “shooter” and kept his girlfriend in the dark about it. Fortunately, the SATs were often on Saturdays, which gave him a great deal of time to travel without having to ask his tutor for time off.
However, it took Ming Jun some time to hide it from the people around him. Although he is a local, his parents don’t require him to go home every weekend, so he can get away with “busy with studies”, but the only problem is his girlfriend. Because he didn’t dare to tell his girlfriend the truth, he often had to make up all kinds of excuses, such as something happened at home, to play at a friend’s house out of town, or to attend an academic conference with his tutor, etc. To shorten the time he was out of touch, he often took a taxi straight to the airport as soon as the exam was over. In order to shorten the lost time, he often took a taxi and went straight to the airport as soon as the exams were over. So when you do the math, the travel time he spent abroad as a “shooter” was not even 30 hours.
Although he knew from the beginning that this “career” was destined to be short, he was still surprised by the suddenness of the end.
At the beginning of spring 2014, he received the usual unfamiliar phone call, and at first he thought it was a new assignment notice – the agency had often changed numbers to contact him before – but before he could say his first “hello”, the other side said sharply. “Something has happened, do not contact again.” Then, the phone was immediately hung up, leaving only the empty busy tone in the receiver.
Ming Jun said, at that time he was really frightened, after all, this call came at the moment, he was preparing for his graduation defense, although the job is not yet settled, but several job fairs with the enterprise side of the people talk well. If something happened at this juncture, it would be really no way to explain to anyone.
Therefore, the only way he can think of is to “hide”.
Even that day in the “Kempinski” bright restaurant, Ming Jun about the “hiding” days, it seems to be a palpitation.
He said that after he received the call, he immediately pulled out the cell phone card used for “work” and cut it up, and considering that the computer would also be in danger, he directly sank the computer into a suburban pond. In those days he did not even dare to go back to his rented house, nor did he dare to use his ID card, and hid for a while in some classmates’ homes. It was only after a month that he heard some fragmentary news, generally saying that the agent did a big wave of proxy exams in the English section of the graduate exams, alarmed the police and arrested a few people, but he was part of the “overseas business”, so there was no investigation to his side.
At the same time, Ming Jun knew that his “part-time job” had come to an end.
Epilogue
After three rounds of wine that day, we were all a bit dizzy. “So, are you still doing it?” I asked that night, when we were about to part ways.
“I don’t think I’ll be doing it anymore,” he said, “I’ve been too busy flying around these past few years, my hair is falling out a bit, and I feel like it’s easy for people to see it; secondly, I’ve been thinking about this thing, and I don’t think it’s a good idea, and I don’t want to go through that feeling of fear last time. The second time. Besides, now I can earn money after graduation, in addition to the house, my father’s medicine money I can also pay more easily.”
Ming Jun said, after not being a “shooter”, he first worked in a private training institution as an English teacher for a period of time. Then simply and a few friends each took out their savings, together with the investment to run a small foreign test training institutions. Now he will still take a “machine experience group” every month to go abroad to take the test, although with “machine experience group” of money less a lot, but after all, are legal income, heart also frank.
As for the “huge amount” that was taken out to buy a house, Ming Jun said he didn’t explain the real source of the money to his parents until the end, but simply said that he made tutoring for overseas exams and earned more money.
“Then how did you hide it from your girlfriend?” I pressed again, “How to explain the matter of earning millions as a tutor is too strange.”
Ming Jun shook his head and said, “She might know, but she won’t say.”
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