It goes without saying that, at 16 years old, I was young and stupid. I had just graduated high school, and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. My neighbor – let’s call him Adam – who was 19 at the time and had a car, was in his second year of Electrical Engineering. Naturally, I idolized my older, cooler neighbor, and imitated him by also enrolling in E.E..

Adam is a psychopath. I mean this in the text-book clinical sense. Of course I didn’t know it at the time, but that’s because there are a couple of characteristics to psychopaths you should be aware of. The first is that they have no fear nor empathy. The second, and less commonly known, is that they’re very good at convincing you otherwise – at least Adam was. To somebody who didn’t know him, he’d come across as a sweet, innocent young man who just wanted to do his best.

He was surprised that, unlike him, I immediately started classes at university. He was part of something called the ‘Intensive English Program’ (IEP), and for largely uninteresting reasons, I happen to speak English as a first language. This meant I didn’t have any problems passing the mandatory, and internationally administered, ‘Test of English as a Foreign Language’. In his case, this was something he struggled with to the point of desperation.

If Adam didn’t pass soon, he would lose his financial aid. At first, he asked me to tutor him, as a sort of friendly repayment for the free rides and, as I really didn’t want to take the bus to university, I gladly obliged. When he soon realized that learning a new language would take significant effort and too much time, he then proposed that instead, he figure out some way to use Bluetooth (which was a new consumer technology at the time), to communicate the test questions to me, and that I feed him the answers.

Not wanting to offend my idol and chauffeur, and also empathizing with his desperation, I agreed, knowing that this would never actually work. He knew this too, so instead, his new scheme – unbeknown to me – involved finding somebody who owned or managed a testing center, and to manipulate them into letting me do the test in his place. The brand-new electronic version of the test, meant that any business which had spare computers could apply online to become a certified testing center. All you had to do was to submit an application on their website, attach some photos of the room where you would administer the test, and run their benchmarking software on one of your spare computers. Needless to say, there were a lot of small testing centers dotted around the country, running a multitude of digital tests, looking to make a bit of money from the fees.

Trust Me

After a few tries, Adam found Joe. ‘Dr. Joe’, as he called himself, who managed a small testing center at the edge of the city with 2 rooms; the larger of which had 20 computers, and the smaller had 3. They had agreed that Adam could use the room with 3 computers, on the condition that he filled the two additional seats with other students who also needed ‘paid help’ to pass the test. Joe explained that, theoretically, the system would select a seat randomly, but if we arrived early, he could make sure the other 20 computers were shut off – the system simply wouldn’t see them, and would guarantee placement in the smaller, more private room.

Joe set out two conditions for this service: the first, was that each of the 3 students would pay him $500 in addition to the testing fees. The second, was that only one additional person was allowed to be in the room to ‘help’. I later discovered that the reason for the latter condition, was that he didn’t believe anyone could write fast enough to fulfill the 300-word essay portion of the test for 3 people in the allotted time. This way, he could guarantee that at least one or two of the students wouldn’t make it in time, and he could then profit by charging them again for a resit.

Seeing as Adam was in the Intensive English Program, he was in a perfect market to find willing participants. He charged two of his colleagues $1000 each to join him, not only ensuring that he would pass the test free of charge, but also pocketing a handsome $500 for himself. All that was left was getting me to do it.

“Remember how you said you would help me pass the English test? Do you want me to lose my financial aid? I’ve always had your back. Everyone is in on it, nothing to worry about, trust me.”

Test Day

Nobody else seemed nervous. Joe was a tall, thin, soft-spoken man in his early fifties, who alternated between a beige and cream suit and tie. He contrasted so sharply with the small, windowless, concrete testing center that, at first glance, he didn’t seem like he belonged there. The day of the test was the first day I met him. He seemed so relaxed, smiling all the way through, that I was almost sure he was confused, and wasn’t aware of exactly what he had agreed to let us do.

We arrived earlier than everyone else, as instructed. They closed the door to the tiny room with the 3 computers. Inside were the students, me, Joe and the testing moderator – everyone really was in on the jig. The test consisted of four parts: Reading, Listening, Speaking and Writing. The first two were multiple choice, and more importantly, were identical across all computers, globally. The other two students simply copied my inputs. For the speaking part, they had to do it themselves, I could only do one.

The problem was that you couldn’t stagger the computers more than a few minutes apart, so all the tests had to be done at the same time. Finally came the writing part – it was a generic question, where you had to write a 300 word essay in an hour. Right before I started, Joe said to me that the fastest he’d ever seen anyone complete the writing section was 30 minutes, and implied that this mysterious individual was an impressive anomaly.

Joe had never met a computer nerd with teenage reflexes. I was fresh out of high school, where bullshitting my way through homework essays was practically my profession, and I could easily type at 150+ words per minute. I looked him in the eye as I began generating verbose arguments at the speed of an LLM. He laughed, assuming I was joking and mashing random keys. When I had finished all 3 essays in just under 5 minutes, he asked me not to press the submit button. He inspected my outputs with confusion.

Afterwards, it was relief and high-fives all around. The other two students asked me if I was sure my answers were correct. I reassured them, and they collectively invited me to dinner to show their gratitude. This, should have been the end of the story.

Results Day

Results came out a couple of weeks later, they had near perfect scores on everything but the Speaking section, which they had to do themselves, but this was still more than enough for them to pass. There were no calls expressing relief or gratitude. Instead, I got a call from Adam, who said that he and Joe had something they wanted to discuss.

“How did you learn to type like that?”, Joe asked, impressed.

I shrugged.

“Do you think you could do the same thing, but in there?”, pointing to the room with the 20 computers.

My teenage ego replied instinctively on my behalf.

“Sure, probably.”

“I’ll give you $50 per computer.”

Knowing that Adam had charged double what Joe had asked for, and that people were willing to pay a lot more, I countered:

“How about 10% of whatever you charge instead.”

I felt proud of my business acumen. My ego inflated further.

He agreed, and sure enough, a couple of weeks later, Joe was charging upwards of $5,000 a head. Adam had convinced me to split my earnings with him 50-50. He argued that he had brought all of this into existence, so he was entitled to half. When he realized that this wasn’t much of an argument, he pivoted, and instead pointed out that he knew all of the students in IEP – the potential ‘customers’ – so he would bring them in, charge a commission, and split that with me too.

I agreed and went along anyway. I never saw a penny from Adam, but I kept giving him half; in any case, even half was way too much money for a teenager. There was a test almost every Saturday, which meant that my share of $250 a computer (post friendship tax), translated into roughly $5,000 a week.

There were a lot of consequences and in-betweens to all of this happening, and to having relatively so much more, suddenly, at that age – but I won’t get into that in this story.

Empire

Pretty soon it was impossible to get Joe on the phone. It rang constantly – eager customers wanting to exploit this new, premium testing service. People would fly in from other countries for the privilege. He started a waiting list, which quickly ballooned to a six-month waiting list, all paid in advance. It wasn’t long before he franchised. Joe hired someone full-time whose sole job was to sit beside me, copy everything I was writing, and fax it to the other testing centers he had recently acquired.

At these other centers, armies of low-paid workers waited to use my answers as a template to do a computer each. There were dozens of them, each with around 30 computers. Every Saturday, for nearly two years.

It became so routine that Joe even hired hospitality staff. As they patrolled the testing center in their uniforms, offering tea and coffee to students, the whole thing felt – professional.

Sometimes there were special exceptions. A PhD candidate at a very prestigious university in England needed a near-perfect score to be accepted – I’m there, they’ve cleared the room, and you bet they’ve paid a lot more to ensure the result.

VIP’s, sometimes even ones who spoke perfect English, but just didn’t want to sit through a 5 hour exam.

Copy-cats started to pop-up, unsuccessfully. Joe was trusted – this wasn’t exactly a service you could get a refund for, and chances were, you found out about Joe from someone who had tried his service and been successful. So, even if competitors were cheaper, Joe was still king.

One day, without warning, there were no more exams scheduled. This wasn’t necessarily abnormal; sometimes there were weeks where no exams were scheduled, but there were no exams scheduled for the foreseeable future. The long, long waiting list of people who had paid Joe in advance, across dozens of testing centers, called him relentlessly, anxiously wondering why they were being delayed.

This went on for 3 months, after which, Joe disappeared from the face of the Earth.