LAW EXAM SCAM? 3 SUSPECTS CHARGED IN ADMISSIONS CHEATING.

Byline: Peter Hartlaub Daily News Staff Writer

Danny Khatchaturian and Dikran Iskendarian wanted to be lawyers.

Now they need one.

In the first case of its kind, the men from Glendale and La Canada Flintridge face charges of stealing a Law School Admissions Test through a clever but bungled scheme. Prosecutors say it involved forging identification to get the exam questions in Los Angeles, and then using a pager to transmit the answers to Hawaii where the test was being administered hours later because of the time difference.

The plan was clever enough that the two men scored in the 99th percentile on the test, authorities said.

But it was bungled. The accomplice, identified as Ashot Melikyan of Glendale, is accused of pulling a switchblade on a test proctor who chased him down the street when he tried to run off with the exam. In Hawaii, the test-takers were spotted paying more attention to their pagers than the examination.

``Simply put, this case is about two college students who decided they wanted to go to law school, and they decided to cheat to get there,'' Deputy District Attorney Loni Petersen said during a recent grand jury hearing.

The organization that administers the LSAT said it's the first time one of its exams has been stolen, while prosecutors in the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office say it's new legal territory for them as well.

Khatchaturian, Iskendarian and Melikyan were each charged with conspiracy, robbery and grand theft, which could lead to a five-year prison term. Melikyan faces the enhancement that he used a weapon during a crime.

The three men pleaded not guilty last month, and Khatchaturian and Iskendarian are free on $250,000 bail.

Khatchaturian, 23, a University of Southern California honors student, is represented by former California Supreme Court Justice Armand Arabian, who declined to comment on the case. Melikyan, 23, could not be reached for comment. Iskendarian, 22, who attended Woodbury University in Burbank, referred comment to his lawyer, Christopher Armen, who said his client wasn't involved in any conspiracy and is confident he will be acquitted.

Experts say the pressure to succeed on the LSAT is especially high, because one-day exams sometimes count for more than four years of letter grades.

``Cheating on it is not like cheating on your history final in high school,'' Loyola Law School dean Laurie Levenson said. ``This means so much more to people. This opens the door to your legal career.''

Not a simple plan

The men are accused of devising an intricate conspiracy, finding a way to exploit time-zone differences and satellite technology to ensure high scores.

In the end, however, the no-nonsense examination administers still managed to thwart almost every step of the plan.

Prosecutors claim that in February 1997, Khatchaturian and Iskendarian enlisted Melikyan to register for the LSAT at USC with a fake student ID and sneak out with one of the test booklets.

Prosecutors say Melikyan followed the plan successfully until the tests were handed out and he made so much noise dashing for the door he alerted proctor Brian Gore.

Gore said he chased Melikyan down Exposition Boulevard and got his hands on him when Melikyan pulled what looked like a switchblade and escaped into a car.

``I didn't want to find out for sure if it was a switchblade or how good he was at using it, so I let him go,'' Gore testified.

While this was occurring, Khatchaturian and Iskendarian are accused of waiting in Hawaii, where the test hadn't started because of the time zone difference. Prosecutors say they planned to take the test there, while receiving answers on their alphanumeric pagers.

LSAT proctors from Hawaii - who flew to Los Angeles to testify - said that they confronted both test takers after noticing what they characterized as bizarre behavior, including repeated tinkering with the pagers.

Suspecting that Khatchaturian and Iskendarian had received the answers from someone else, the Law School Admissions Council investigated, and the case eventually went to the grand jury.

Judging by his accolades as a student at USC, Khatchaturian seemed on his way to a prosperous legal career.

Honor and dishonor 

According to the school yearbook, the political science major was president of the Armenian Student Association and member of a pre-law honor society called the Blackstonians.

Out of the 19,000 or so who took the LSAT that day worldwide, only 40 scored higher than Khatchaturian, while 129 scored higher than Iskendarian, exam officials testified.

At the grand jury hearing, prosecutors interviewed a Rand statistician, Stephen Klein, who said the scores were almost surely fraudulently obtained.

Klein said in contrast to the main score, the pair were less than mediocre in a ``variable'' section of the exam, where Hawaii questions differed from other states - making it impossible to cheat with a California test.

``Mr. Khatchaturian had a score that was equivalent to a chance score,'' Klein said of the variable section. ``If you had just flipped a coin, you would have gotten a score the same as his score.''

While Khatchaturian never took the LSAT again, Iskendarian tried again in December 1997 and scored in the 40th percentile - a drop that Klein said was a statistical impossibility.

``The odds of that occurring by chance are about 3 in 10 billion,'' Klein said.

A $600,000 test

Deputy District Attorney Petersen made it clear that Khatchaturian, Iskendarian and Melikyan are being prosecuted for the alleged conspiracy and theft of the test - not the actual cheating.

Law School Admissions Council officials said they administer four exams each year, each costing more than $600,000 to produce, making even a single test ``intellectual property'' that is almost irreplaceable.

``If you want to talk about the pennies it costs for the pieces of paper, that's one thing,'' Petersen said. ``Creating this test is an ongoing process that takes years and years.''

After admissions council officials first suspected that cheating had occurred on the February 1997 test, they checked exams in Japan and China to see if other students had produced similar answer patterns but found none.

While admissions council officials said their security has never been breached before, there is a record of arrests for time zone scams on other tests.

In 1996, an Arcadia man was accused of running a New York-to-Los Angeles cheating scheme that supplied correct answers to more than 100 men and women taking the Graduate Record Examination.

Years ago, administers of the Scholastic Aptitude Test estimated that cheaters represent approximately 450 of the 1.8 million students who take the college entrance exam each year.