By msnbc.com and news wires
NEW YORK - Officials announced 13 arrests Tuesday in an SAT scandal in which test-takers allegedly accepted money to impersonate other students, two months after prosecutors first charged a 19-year-old man with forging identities, even posing as a female student to take the exam for her at one point.
Thirteen former and current Long Island, N.Y. high schoolers turned themselves in on Tuesday, authorities said, bringing the total charged in the cheating ring to 20. Four of the new defendants are accused of taking payments of $500 to $3,600 to stand in for students on SAT or ACT exams. The Associated Press reported that nine others are accused of paying the alleged impostors to take the test for them, Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said.
The scandal broke in September, when Samuel Eshaghoff, 19, a 2010 graduate of Great Neck North High School, and six current Great Neck North students were arrested. Eshaghoff flew home from college to impersonate the high schoolers, accepting between $1,500 and $2,500 from each of them to take the exam for them, prosecutors said. He also allegedly took the test for a seventh student, a girl, but did not make her pay.
All 13 arrested Tuesday were current or former Long Island high schoolers. Five graduated from Great Neck North High School, two went to North Shore Hebrew Academy, one was from Roslyn High School, and another went to St. Mary's High School, authorities said, reported NBCNewYork.com.
Separate cheating ring, or same scandal?
Prosecutors said the latest group of test-takers did not work directly with Eshaghoff but said they all knew each other.
None of the students' names were published by NBCNewYork.com. But The New York Post identified one of the alleged test-takers who came forward Tuesday as Joshua Chefac, 20, a graduate of Great Neck North High School. Chefac, now a senior at Tulane University, was charged with first-degree scheme to defraud, second-degree falsifying business records and second-degree criminal impersonation, according to The Post.
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