Did you know that the proportion of college students who admit to academic cheating has held around 75 percent since 1963?
CHEATING INCREASES when rules are ambiguous and when strict supervision is lacking, studies show. Researchers at Duke University and elsewhere found that although many people will cheat a little, only a few will cheat to the maximum degree possible. Close oversight can eliminate cheating, a solution documented since fourth-century India, where spies were positioned in government departments to ensure that nobody cheated the king.
ROSIE RUIZ faked winning the women’s 1980 Boston Marathon, infamously skipping most of the race. Columbia University professor Charles Van Doren feigned brilliance before a 1950s TV quiz-show audience of millions until he confessed to getting answers in advance. The scandal was so notorious, Robert Redford made the 1994 movie Quiz Show about it.
ALL-TIME top cheat in a Ponzi scheme: Bernard Madoff, who cost investors US$65 billion. Until the 2008 market crash, Madoff thrived by paying off early investors with capital raised from later entrants. The Ponzi scheme was named for a Boston immigrant who cheated investors out of millions from 1919 to 1920. Charles Ponzi served 10 years in prison and was deported. Madoff got 150 years.
TOP TAX CHEAT: Walter Anderson. Indicted in 2005, the telecommunications executive hid income in off-shore accounts, cheating the U.S. government out of $200 million in the nation’s largest personal tax-evasion scheme. The top spot on the 2014 IRS Dirty Dozen list of tax scams went to tax fraud through identity theft.
THE IRS whistleblower statute entitles you to up to 30 percent of the money collected if you supply information about large-scale tax cheats.
NEW CASINOS spend more than $10 million on surveillance, according to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the mid-1990s, Massachusetts Institute of Technology students formed a campus club to provide training in card-counting, which is not considered cheating. They then targeted blackjack tables in Las Vegas, profiting more than $5 million. Their system crashed after casinos identified team members and circulated their MIT yearbook photos around the globe.
INJURIES IN professional soccer can lead to penalties for opponents. Research shows that male players are likely to fake injuries more often than females. More than 70 percent of fans disapprove of players who fake injury.
THE PROPORTION of college students who admit to academic cheating has held around 75 percent since 1963. A 2012 study by the Josephson Institute of Ethics found that the percentage of high school kids admitting to cheating on an exam dropped from 59 to 51 percent in two years. In that study, students overwhelmingly disagreed with the statement “My parents/guardians would rather I cheat than get bad grades.” – Kate Nolan
