"Students embrace cheating because they don't view it as unethical," Lee said.
"They're just interested in their goal -- an A -- and don't consider the moral ramifications of their actions," he said.
When society fails to morally indoctrinate students, however, the Telecommunications Police Brigade, under the National Police Agency, races to plug the gaps.
Armed with high-tech devices that sniff out electronic chatter, brigade officers visit testing sites before exams to determine the presence of normal signals there, said brigade deputy commander Liu Tai-chiang (
Any deviation from that original reading during the exam results in officers -- often disguised as proctors -- zeroing in on the source of the atypical signal, he added.
"We caught test takers once who installed hidden cameras on their glasses and transmitted footage of questions to an outside source, who in turn produced answers and beamed them back via earpieces hidden in test takers' ears," Liu said.
A variation on that method, Stephen said, involves using a scanner pen that can both scan and transmit whatever it touches on paper.
The source outside the building who receives questions and broadcasts answers back is a test wizard who is also handsomely paid -- typically hundreds of thousands of NT dollars per cheater -- for his services, Liu said.
Who fronts the money?
Parents, of course, Stephen said.
"They fear their kid will flunk a key test and thus won't move on to a better school," he said.
"A lot's at stake, so they're willing to get their kid involved and cough up cash," he said.
Cram schools typically spawn such rings, Liu said.
Adults also use electronic signal-based cheating methods to ace licensing or civil servant exams, he said.
"We've busted two such rings comprised of up to 30 testers each in the past five years," he said.
Speaking to the Taipei Times in a smoky bar last week, Stephen, 33, reminisced over high school classmates' planting answer keys in bathroom stalls erroneously marked "Out of Order" during tests.
One bathroom break was all it took to ace the exam, he said, his eyes gazing off nostalgically behind coke-bottle glasses.
Asked whether a fat wad of cash was behind his helping his student cheat almost a decade ago, Stephen shrugged and took a long, contemplative drag on his cigarette.
"No," he replied. "I wanted him to do well; he was like a little brother to me."
"Plus, I wanted to see if I could ace that exam -- again," he said.
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