“Maintaining the security and integrity of the GMAT exam is one of the Council’s most critical responsibilities,” said Dave Wilson, GMAC president and CEO. “We owe nothing less to the 240,000 GMAT test takers who work so hard each year to prepare for the exam fairly—and to the more than 4,000 graduate management education programs that rely on the GMAT’s reliability and validity to measure the aptitude of incoming students.”

 In addition to the $2.3 million the Council was awarded in the copyright infringement case in June, courts also gave GMAC assets owned or controlled by Shi, including a computer hard drive that contained information about the individuals who participated in Scoretop’s unlawful activities, either as employees or agents of Shi or as “VIP members” of the Scoretop site, and the Scoretop domain name.

Following an analysis of the hard drive, GMAC gained possession of several thousand email addresses of individuals who paid at least $30 to register for the site. In July, letters were sent to each of those email addresses notifying recipients that they might be a target of an investigation into the possible violation of GMAT testing policies.

The Council is limiting its investigation to those individuals who either posted live GMAT questions on the Scoretop website that they saw on the GMAT exam or wrote a message on Scoretop confirming that they saw items from the Scoretop website on the GMAT exam. If there is compelling evidence of a test taker knowingly violating GMAC policy, which includes “any unauthorized access to or disclosure of test content prior to, during, or after the test administration,” the Council will cancel the GMAT score(s) of that test taker. Both the test taker involved and any schools to which he or she selected to receive score reports will be notified of the cancellation.

Once these notifications have taken place, GMAC will announce that it has completed its investigation. Affected test takers will have the ability to appeal any decision made by GMAC. Anyone who is notified that GMAC is taking action will have 15 days in which to appeal the decision. Details of the appeals process will be outlined in the notification letter.

Wilson emphasized that the Council is “committed to reporting to schools any unethical behavior that we uncover regarding our testing policy and lack of compliance with that policy by candidates for admission who are sending their scores to schools.”

Wilson also said that, in addition to canceling scores, GMAC may also refer appropriate cases to law enforcement authorities for criminal investigation.