A US grand jury has indicted 15 Chinese citizens with conspiracy, fraud and forging passports as part of a scam to fake college entrance examinations, prosecutors said today.
US Attorney David Hickton for the Western District of Pennsylvania unsealed the 35-count indictment and named 12 of suspects. The identities of the other three remain under seal.
The suspects have been indicted by a federal grand jury in the city of Pittsburgh with alleged conspiracy, counterfeiting foreign passports, mail and wire fraud.
US prosecutors allege that from 2011 to 2015, they conspired for imposters to take standardized entrance tests to US colleges and graduate schools.
The conspirators used imposters to sit the examinations for them, using fake passports to hide their true identity.
They would then use the test scores to gain entry to American colleges and universities.
US prosecutors did not identify which colleges were involved but said most of the fraudulent exams were taken in western Pennsylvania, which includes the city of Pittsburg.
Hickton said the defendants sought fraudulent admission to institutions of higher education and circumvented visa requirements.
"These students were not only cheating their way into the university, they were also cheating their way through our nation's immigration system," said Homeland Security Investigations special agent John Kelleghan.
The 12 named suspects were identified as Han Tong, Xi Fu, Xiaojin Guo, Yudong Zhang, Yue Zou, Biyuan Li, Jia Song, Ning Wei, Gong Zhang, Songling Peng, Siyuan Zhao and Yunlin Sun.
The identities of the three others were kept under seal.
China sends the most number of foreign students to the United States with 274,439 in 2013-14 or 31 per cent of the total international enrollment, according to the Institute of International Education.
India came next with 11.6 per cent, followed by South Korea with 7.7 per cent and Saudi Arabia with 6.1 per cent.
