A former tuition teacher pleaded guilty on Monday (April 16) to
helping six Chinese nationals cheat in their 2016 GCE O-Level
examinations through an elaborate scheme with the use of
smartphones.
Tan Jia Yan, 32, who used to work at tuition centre Zeus
Education Centre, was convicted of 27 charges of cheating. Ten more
similar charges will be taken into consideration for sentencing,
which has been adjourned to a later date.
Her three alleged accomplices — Zeus Education Centre’s
principal Poh Yuan Nie, also known as Pony; tuition teacher Fiona
Poh Min; and Feng Riwen, who conducted some classes there — have
decided to claim trial, which will start on Tuesday.
On Monday, the court heard that Tan, Pony Poh, Fiona Poh, and
Feng were allegedly involved in a scheme to help six Chinese
students to cheat in their O-Level examinations in 2016 for the
Mathematics, English, and Physics/Chemistry subjects.
On the day of the exams, Tan, Fiona Poh and Feng helped the
students to attach wearable Bluetooth devices onto their bodies and
a skin-coloured in-ear earphone before going into the exam centres.
These devices were linked to mobile phones, which were concealed
under the students’ clothing.
Either Tan or Fiona Poh also attended the exams, having
registered separately as private candidates, with a hidden iPhone
affixed to their chests.
Once the exams began, they purportedly used the video-calling
app FaceTime to broadcast the exam papers back to their accomplices
stationed at the tuition agency.
Once the three accomplices had the answers to the exam
questions, they would call the students individually, and read out
the answers to them.
The students, who received the instructions through their
earphones, would then write the answers in their respective exam
papers.
The cheating went on undetected for almost a week in 2016, from
Oct 19 until Oct 24, when an invigilator caught one of the
students, 20-year-old Chinese national Chen Yi, after hearing
unusual electronic transmission sounds coming from him.
The invigilator reported her suspicions to the chief presiding
examiner and presiding examiner. Chen was allowed to finish the
English Paper 1 exam, before being escorted to the holding room,
where they found the smartphone devices on him.
Chen then told them about the arrangement with Zeus Education
Centre, and the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board was
subsequently informed of his cheating attempt.
Five other Chinese nationals were found to be involved in the
same cheating scheme, although it was not clear how they were
discovered. They are Cheng Xiang, 19; Zhou Zice, 17; Xiao Junze,
19; Zhang Jinlu, 20; and Wang Fangfei, 19.
Investigations also revealed that these six students were the
subjects of contracts struck between Zeus and Dong Xin, the
director of a company called Nou Cheng.
Dong had referred the students to Zeus to prepare them for the
O-Level exams. It is not known what Nou Cheng is.
For every student Dong sent to Zeus, Pony Poh would receive
about S$8,000 in deposit money and about S$1,000 in admissions
fees. The money was to be refunded if the students failed to pass
the O-Level exams and subsequently failed to get a place in a
polytechnic.
For her part in the scheme, Tan received a monthly salary of
about S$3,000 from Pony Poh, and S$1,000 per student for providing
them with lodging services.
For each charge of cheating, Tan could be jailed up to three
years and/or fined.
In a related case, the owner of Pivot Tuition Centre, Wong Mee
Keow, was fined S$2,000 in February for lying to the police in 2006
to protect Pony Poh. The pair are in a relationship.
In that case, Pony Poh was suspected of helping Chinese
nationals gain entry into a secondary school here without sitting
for an entrance exam.
However, the investigation against Pony Poh was dropped as Wong
lied about not knowing her and the police ran out of leads.
When Pony Poh, Fiona Poh, Tan and Feng were arrested for their
alleged roles in the recent exam cheating scam, Wong again lied
about not knowing Pony Poh, deleting photographs of her from her
mobile phone to prevent the police from identifying her.
Pony Poh currently faces 38 charges of cheating.
todayonline