TOKYO: Tokyo police on Thursday sent to public prosecutors papers on an 18-year-old male applicant for admission to Waseda University for allegedly leaking entrance examination questions online in February by using smart glasses capable of taking pictures.

Totsuka Police Station of Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department suspects that the male student obstructed business at the private university in the Japanese capital through the leakage of exam questions.

The teenager has admitted to the charge and said that he came up with the idea for the fraud because he was worried about failing the exam. He said that the fraud was a more serious act than cheating and that he regrets it, according to investigative sources.

The boy is believed to have asked people he found on social media in advance to tell him the answers to the questions and paid them after the exam on Feb. 16.

The youth from Machida in Tokyo is suspected of taking photos of entrance exam questions in chemistry and other subjects for the university’s school of creative science and engineering using the smart glasses equipped with camera and data communication functions.

He posted the photos on X, formerly Twitter, so that they could be accessed by anybody, allegedly obstructing fair entrance exams.

A few days before the exam, he specified a date and time that overlapped with the exam time and told the people who offered to help him that “there may be some questions that I don’t understand during this time,” according to the sources.

After the exam, he sent several thousand yen each as rewards to some of those who answered the questions for him through an online payment service.

He also took an entrance exam on Feb. 21 for another faculty of the university, wearing the smart glasses.

The fraud came to light after a person who noticed it informed the university, which does not allow the use of electronic devices with communication functions, including smart glasses, in exams.

The university invalidated the exam results of the teenager, who failed the tests in both faculties.

JIJI Press