Cheating

A group of Southern Californians filed a federal class-action lawsuit against Great Western Bank on Thursday, charging the thrift with tricking unsophisticated customers, most of them elderly, into taking money out of federally insured certificates of deposit and investing it in Great Western's uninsured mutual funds.

When a long-distance phone company sweepstakes promised $1 million to a randomly selected caller, Paul Hilling started dialing for dollars. Using an automatic dialer and a bank of phone lines, he made 415,000 calls during the two-week contest in October. He made nearly one of every four calls during the contest. But when GCI found out what he had done, it disqualified him.

USC, on the verge of reviving its storied football tradition under Coach John Robinson, is encountering some new academic embarrassments. In the past year, three top Trojan recruits have been accused, in effect, of cheating on their college entrance examinations. A fourth recruit was accused in 1993 but, unlike the others, he was disqualified before he could matriculate.

Organizers of the Miss Virginia pageant took away the winner's title Thursday, two weeks after she was accused of embellishing her credentials. Andrea Ballengee had refused to resign, pageant spokesman Bud Oakey said. Ballengee's most recent telephone number was disconnected and she could not be located for comment.

Saturday night, about an hour short of midnight, and Bryce Carlson is on the prowl. The dense palm jungle inside the Mirage, Steve Wynn's South Seas fantasy on the Las Vegas Strip, vibrates to the rhythm of a live pop band. Under faux-bamboo canopies, 80 blackjack tables hum like hives. A young Asian player with a $500 bet stares first at his nine and seven and then at the dealer's up card, a queen. He motions for a hit and draws an eight, busting his hand with 24.

Three leading players in England's top soccer league were arrested Tuesday, along with two other persons, as part of an investigation into allegations that players took money to throw matches. The allegations, if true, would constitute the worst scandal in British soccer history, involving hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes over several years.

MELBOURNE, Australia -- Several players on the women's tennis tour have been approached to fix matches or provide inside information sought by gamblers, the head of the tour said Monday, echoing disclosures of similar overtures made to male players. "Less than 10" women have been approached, said Larry Scott, WTA Tour chairman and chief executive. However, he acknowledged that the full extent of the problem might not be known. "I'm not sure I know all the ways players have been approached.

In an unusual lawsuit against the American Dental Assn., 13 students at UCLA's School of Dentistry contend they were falsely accused of aiding cheaters on a national examination and unfairly denied a chance to defend themselves. The dental association alleges that the students did not cheat during their own tests but violated rules by remembering and writing down exam questions distributed later to others preparing for a test.

PHOENIX -- In the latest example that Congress is keeping a focused eye on the NFL, a senior senator said Friday that he wants the league to explain why it destroyed the videotapes from a cheating scandal involving the New England Patriots. "I do believe that it is a matter of importance," Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said at a news conference, the same day his comments on the matter appeared in the New York Times.

Six sophomores were expelled and more than a dozen other students faced suspensions Tuesday in a cheating scandal that has rocked Harvard-Westlake, a top-tier Los Angeles private school with a national reputation for its academics. Administrators said students conspired to steal Spanish and history tests by distracting teachers in their classrooms. The tests were then shown to several other students before midterm exams last month, said Harvard-Westlake President Thomas Hudnut.