A teacher detained for selling cheating devices to students told authorities that her original intention had been to help her daughter realize her dream to secure a place at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

"At first I hadn't thought whether it was illegal. I regret very much what I have done," Liu Yanhua, 44, a grade-12 English teacher at No.1 Middle School in Fuyu county, Jilin Province, sobbed, according to a report by the Xinhua News Agency yesterday.

Liu, along with another teacher named He Shujie, was caught and detained while testing the cheating devices in an apartment building near an exam center on June 4 after local police received a tip-off, three days before the national college entrance exam began, which was held from June 7 to 8.
Liu said that she saw the advertisement for the devices offering answers on the Internet in March, and first decided to buy one for her daughter, who didn't do well in her studies.

But the vendor refused to sell her one unit unless she agreed to buy more, she said.

After requests from relatives and friends whose children would also sit the exam, she bought 27 of the devices and sold them for more than 443,540 yuan ($64,880) in total.

"I sent all the money to the vendor. I didn't earn a penny through the transaction," she said. But she was reluctant to give any information about the vendor, Xinhua reported.

However, the device relies on the support of other people outside the exam room, the report said.

It quoted an insider as saying that the examinees in the room send out pictures of the paper within one hour of the exam starting and people outside research and send the answers.

Liu refused to cooperate further with the police and the search for the vendor has so far been fruitless, according to Chen Guoqing, deputy director of the public security bureau.

Chen said that all 27 devices had been confiscated before the exam, and the students involved had been allowed to sit the exam.

Police have detained 34 suspects in Songyuan for allegedly selling hi-tech cheating devices to students to help them in the exam, Lai Jianhua, deputy secretary-general of the Songyuan municipal government in Jilin Province said Friday.

In total 33 students were caught cheating, and 683 devices have been confiscated, such as receivers and earpieces, Lai said.

The college entrance exam papers are considered a state secret, Beijing lawyer Xu Xilong told the People's Daily on June 12. He said that, according to criminal law, illegally acquiring state secrets carries a seven-yar prison sentence.

Source: The Global Times