I run an English resume editing, LinkedIn Profile creation, interview coaching, and academic document(s) and application(s) final editing service in Shanghai (reach out on my profile if interested). We have been approached to do everything under the sun from forging recommendation letters to writing entire Master's level theses from scratch and everything in between. There is a ton of business if you have no ethics. No way, no how.
I know that this sort of cheating happens quite a bit, and usually people just turn a blind eye to it. According to some of my friends from overseas, some of my their friends (my classmates) hired test takers to get them into the university I attended.
Makes me a bit livid. I studied and worked hard by playing fair.
I took SAT in Hong Kong, 2009 and saw this happen in person. There were even hidden ads for hiring test takers. That explained why there were international students with 2200+ SAT score but could barely read/write/speak in English and had trouble catching up with lectures.
I for one absolutely loathe such dishonesty and the fact that some parents even helped hiring test takers for their kids made me sick.
If you know even basic english, TOEFL is not really difficult. If you are unable to get a decent score in TOEFL, it is very likely that you would not understand anything that is thought in a lecture that is administered in English.
Stuff like that all around developing countries. Those guys shoot themselves in the foot, but most likely that were their parents.
The true story here, I was going through the immigration control in JFK on Moscow -> NYC flight. In front of me was a guy with a family speaking fluent Russian. I thought he was Russian, but then he pulled out a US passport and began telling his "family" to not to speak with immigration or otherwise "they will be revealed". When it was his time to go through the officer, he was visibly super anxious and he barely managed to put a single phrase in English. The immigration guy called somebody, then policemen came and took him and his "family" away.
It amazes me that in this day, there still are naive people who think that they can get their way in the West with bought or fake papers.
