FIUSM Staff
Nine students who were implicated with purchasing stolen tests as part of the exam theft ring last semester are working with the University to avoid the criminal process.
According to the Faculty Senate, seven informal investigations of academic misconduct have been completed. All of those students have agreed to take an F in the corresponding course, pay to take an ethics course, voluntarily sit out a semester and speak to at least five first-year experience classes — exposing 1,500 students to the consequences of cheating.
The Faculty Senate is still trying to get the faculty member whose exams were compromised — whose name has not been disclosed — to explain to faculty assemblies how they can avoid “the trap of phishing emails which is how this all became possible,” according to the minutes from its Jan. 14 meeting.
Last semester’s finals week scheme compromised microbiology tests when alumnus Alex Anaya allegedly broke into an Owe Ehan room, hacked into a professor’s email account and obtained unauthorized material.
Students Krissy Lamadrid, 21, and Jason Calderon, 23, distributed the exams and collected the money. Tests sold for $150 each, according to arrest forms.
The arrest forms also state that student Naisy Vasquez Amador, 22, was also a financier of the operation. All students admitted that they knew the exams were stolen.
Under Florida statute, those who steal and then plan to sell stolen property face first-degree felony charges and those who knowingly purchase stolen property face second-degree felony charges.
Lamadrid faces six felony counts of dealing in stolen property, Amador faces three and Anaya and Calderon both face one.
Assistant Chief Benjamin Guerrero of the University’s Police Department could not be reached to discuss the outcome of Jan. 8 and 9 hearings due press time. The investigation is ongoing.
– news@fiusm.com
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