Exam Theft Ring at UCI Is Broken, Police Say : Arrests: Five students, with access to a large number of office keys, may have been stealing tests for as long as two years, officials say.

Police say they have broken a ring of five students at UC Irvine who previously slipped undetected into campus offices to steal written exams.

Two students were arrested in a sting operation earlier this month and three others were under investigation, said campus Police Chief Mike Michell. One of the arrested students committed suicide one week after his arrest.

The students allegedly stole the exams to boost their grades, not for the purpose of selling the exams.

Amir Bagherzadeh, 22, and Arash Behnam, 21, used a key to enter the office of the chairman of the molecular biology and biochemistry department in the early-morning hours of Feb. 2., searching for tests they were scheduled to take at their noon class, Michell said.

But instead of finding the test for Molecular Biology 107, they found a dummy exam and a trap set by police.

Two plainclothes officers, monitoring a portable alarm system in a darkened room nearby, arrested the two startled suspects between 1 and 2 a.m., Michell said. Two uniformed officers assisted in the arrests.

The exam theft ring, with access to a large number of office keys, was remarkably secretive about its operations, which may have run for as long as two years, Michell said.

Bagherzadeh, a senior biological sciences major, is to be arraigned Friday on charges of burglary and possession of stolen property. He allegedly had a copy of an exam for another class with him when he was arrested.

Behnam, a junior math major and a foreign student from Iran, shot himself once in the chest and died in a luxury hotel in Tijuana one week after he was arrested, said Tom Icenogle, an investigator for the Orange County district attorney’s office. Behnam did not leave a note, but authorities believe the arrest was a factor in the suicide.

Police organized the stakeout after they were tipped off by UC Irvine biochemistry professor Wendell Stanley, who learned of the exam thefts from another student.

“It came pretty close to the perfect crime,” Stanley said. “After their operation was over, there was no physical evidence. If somebody steals a computer, at least you have the thing in the student’s room.”

Stanley, also associate dean for the department, said he discovered a “suspicious” pattern in the grade transcripts of the two arrested students: Those two students showed a penchant for receiving good grades, or at the other extreme, not completing courses.

A key used to open the office of the department chairman was confiscated and was being examined by the sheriff’s laboratory to see if it was the one discovered missing from the Police Department after the Christmas break, Michell said. The key’s identity was not immediately obvious because part of the top had been broken off, he said.

Bagherzadeh may have been the point man for the exam theft ring because he was a community service officer with the Irvine police who had access to a number of police keys, Michell said. After being arrested, Bagherzadeh was immediately fired from his community service office job, the chief added.

“It’s been a disaster for everybody,” Stanley said. “We’ve got one kid who committed suicide. The rest of them have their lives disrupted, if not ruined. The police don’t feel good about it because they (may have been) the source of the key. And it’s always discouraging from an educator’s point of view” to find students cheating.