2/6/2004 -- The China Post is reporting today that four Taiwanese citizens have been arrested for selling IT certification exams questions through the Internet and for taking exams for other individuals.

According to the story, the four in custody -- Tung Pei-chang, 41; Hsu Ching-ping, 27; Hsiung Chih-yuan, 34; and "a man surnamed" Chang, 34 -- were arrested yesterday in various locations throughout Taiwan. Charges are fraud and copyright law.

The China Post article said that the groups sold the questions through the Web sites Test4U.net, TaipeiITtest.net and OPASScertification.net since 2001. According to the report, the sites boasted that the questions they sold were taken directly from Pearson Vue and Prometric test centers in various countries worldwide. The sites are currently offline.

It also states that in May the group began charging candidates TND $10,000 (around U.S. $300) to take exams in their place, employing a network of proxy test-takers and providing the service for about 300 clients in Taiwan.

Both enterprises resulted in revenues of around TND $5,000,000 (approximately U.S. $150,000), prosecutors say.

The China Post says that authorities were notified about the sites in Sept. of last year, but did not say whom the complaint came from.

This is the first known arrest of an overseas provider of IT certification exam questions (a.k.a. braindumps). There have been two high-profile U.S. criminal investigations, including one arrest: Robert Keppel, who owned Cheet-Sheets.com, pled guilty to a felony charge of theft of trade secrets in early 2003 and was sentenced to a year in prison. In another high-profile case, Garry Neale, then-owner of TroyTec.com and Testkiller.com, had his assets seized in June 2002 as part of a criminal investigation based on a complaint filed by Microsoft. Neale has not been charged.

These two incidents virtually quashed the U.S. braindump market, but overseas providers flourished, taking advantage of disparities between U.S. copyright laws and those in other countries, as well as the difficulties in prosecuting non-U.S. providers. This case is the first visible sign that some progress has been made on the international front.

At the Association of Test Publisher's conference earlier this week, this reporter talked to several IT certification security experts who hinted that things may be changing shortly for international braindump providers, but none referred to specific cases. Jack Killorin, Prometric's vice president of Worldwide Security, did remark in an interview that the industry has been looking at using criminal charges other than theft of trade secrets -- such as fraud, conspiracy and falsifying documents -- to pursue such cases, a tactic that has been successfully applied in at least one criminal case involving a higher-education entrance exam. "Do I care if they're charged with violating trade secrets or fraud...? No," he said. "I only care that they're behind bars."

CertCities.com is working on finding out more about this case and will bring it to you shortly. The China Post article can be found here. -Becky Nagel